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FRONTIER 



ARMY SKETCHES 



By JAMES W. STEELE. 



* * * "Vulgar, again! everybody has a different sense for that 
word, I think. What is vulgar? " 

Christie. "Voolgar folk sit on an chair, ane, twa, whiles three 
hours, eatin' an' abune a' drinkin\ as still as hoegs, or gruntin' puir 
every-day clashes, goessip, rubbich ; when ye are aside tkem, ye might 
as weel be aside a cuddy ; they canna gie ye a sang, they canna gie 
ye a story, they canna think ye a thoucht, to save their useless lives; 
that's voolgar folk.'' — Charles Rkade. 




111882., 



CHICAGO: 

JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY. 
1883. 



Copyright, 

By JANSEN, McCLURG & CO. 

A.D. 1882. 



C^' 



<<\ 



rT<KIOHT r^ LEONARD 



PEEFAOE. 



THERE is an interesting phase of American life that 
has hitherto had its chief clironicler in the dime 
novel and its most frequent interpreter in the blood-and- 
terror drama. Only two or three authors, and among 
them the foremost humorists of tlieir time, seem to have 
truly seen, and having seen, to have been able to make 
others see, the unwritten and unconscious poetry and the 
dramatic character of those isolated lives that, care- 
less of themselves, pass awa}^ in the process of erect- 
ing an empire whose boundless horizon, whose toils and 
pains, whose untrodden loneliness, have all combined to 
form a class in which the characters of the desperado 
and the gentleman have strangelv united their charac- 
teristics; where love, longing, and hope exist without 
any of their appropriate surroundings, and where grim 
humor and deep feeling, lacking all their usual forms, 
find expression not in words alone but in every act of 
life. 

Beneath all the melancholy loneliness of wide plains, 
and the monotonous and oppressive sternness of moun- 
tains that lie changeless forever, there is a subtle some- 
thing that cannot be described, or drawn, or clearly 
defined; a something that distinguishes everything from 
that wdiich it most resembles; that makes a portrait to 
differ from the cold outlines of a photograph, and a face 
to differ from both. To capture this essence of descrip- 
tion and cause it to appear in words upon the printed 
page, is the task of genius; and the author does not 



PREFACE. 



flatter himself that he has accomplished it. He is only 
certain that it is not enough to reproduce the impres- 
sions made upon the eye and ear, and that if there be 
something more than that between the lines of these 
sketches, the public will discover it. 

These scenes are not inventions, and these men and 
women not mere figments of the brain. During years of 
association with them, they j3roduced certain impressions 
that time has not dissipated, that have ripened with 
absence, and that, given in fragments imperfectly, and 
touched upon in transient articles, are now for the first 
time, but finally, given to the public in a form of some 
arrangement and compactness. They have been valu- 
able as a private and personal possession. They have 
furnished food for pleasant thought amid the vicissi- 
tudes, labors, perplexities, and endless changes that 
come to every man. It may be a mistake to suppose 
that the aroma exhaled from such recollections may be 
conveyed to the reader's senses also; yet it is with 
something of that hope, that these legends of the camp- 
fire, and sketches of the soldier, the borderer, and the 
dumb denizens of the wilderness, are given to the read- 
ing world. 

General Orders and the reports of district command- 
ers are but dull reading, and there is no colder volume 
than the " Regulations." Officers of the army are not 
greatly given to the platform and the monthly magazine, 
and what they know and might so easily relate they 
seem purposely to be silent about. Yet they have had 
most to do with the development of Western civiliza- 
tion, have mingled with all the characters of the border, 
are themselves members of the unique community to 
which they do not seem to belong, and, leading lives 



PREFACE. 

apart, are 3^et intimate with all their surroundings. As 
a very unimportant member of the military brotherhood, 
the author gathered the impressions which, once written 
and arranged, seemed yet to lack the essential of a 
name. Many years of association with all classes, pro- 
fessions, and conditions have passed since then. All the 
impressions of the soldier have been modified, and have 
taken the form of conviction. And that conviction is, 
that, with all his little and great failings, the American 
regular oflficer is the most accomplished of his calling 
among all the varied uniforms of the world, and that he 
remains, through all vicissitudes, the most self-sacrificing 
and uncomplaining of all the life-long servants of the 
Republic. He is a frontiersman in the best sense of 
that word, and, unspoiled by association, he remains 
true to his untarnished record of a hundred years — a 
gentleman. He has been always respected, and not 
seldom loved, by the turbulent and impatient characters 
who have constantly surrounded him. As all the inci- 
dents and characters that go to make up these chapters 
have been seen and understood from the military stand- 
point and gathered from the inexhaustible fund of mili- 
tary narrative, while they are not stories of "battles, 
sieges, fortunes," they are yet what they are called — 
"Frontier Army Sketches." 

I may add, finally, that it seems impossible to explain 
the interest that clings about lives that are the poorest 
and humblest that this world knows, except upon the 
hypothesis that poverty and hope have ever an uncon- 
scious pathos of their own. If it be true that men and 
women are ever and always the same — the helpless vic- 
tims of circumstance that seems intention and of a 
fatality that seems a plan — still everything that this 



PREFACE. 



whirling' cinder bears upon lier wrinkled surface^ fades 
into insignificance when compared with the myriad- 
minded being whose loves and hopes, whose toils and 
disappointments, make up the sum of life. These are 
all of that class whom the world might well spare, if by 
the world we mean only those who fill the largest places 
in life, but who at last do but take their places with all 
the rest, in tlie commingled dust of beggars and of 
heroes. It was humble life as the author knew it, in 
that terra incognita of the far Soutliwest. That land 
of dreams and shadows and disappointing realities has 
changed its superficial character by having been opened 
to the world hy radways that stretch their iron length 
through valleys that were voiceless when the material 
of these sketches was acquired, and beside reluctant 
streams that have crawled slowly over their leagues of 
sand since the soldier and the priest came together and 
encamped beside them. Yet not advancing civilization, 
nor anything, can materially change that realm of rain- 
less years; of rivers without verdure; of brown moun- 
tains; of wide and silent deserts; of thorns, and cactus, 
and wind-blown sands;" of indolence, idleness, and peace; 
of cloud shadows and the brightness of a sky forever 
blue; of the hopeless sadness of perishing races stranded 
at last upon those tideless shores. As reminiscences 
born in such a land, touched here and there with the 
recollections wrought by a faded uniform and a rusty 
sword, this little volume is offered to the reader. 



COTs^TENTS. 



I. Cai'tain Jinks - - - - - 9 

IT. Jornada Dkl Mitkkto - - - 24 

III. Men of Till-: Bokdkr - - - - 43 

lY. Brown's Revench.; - - - - 58 

y. Coi'PER Distilled - - - - 80 

VI. Joe's Pocket ----- 105 

YII. New Mexican r\)MMox Life - - 143 

YIII. " Peg,"— The Story OF A IKh; - 103 

IX. A Good Indian - - - - - 183 

X. Jack's Divorce - - - - 198 

XL Coyotes - - - - - - 210 

XII. A Guard-House Gentleman - - 220 

XIII. Woman Under Difficulties - - 240 

XIY. The Priest of El Paso - - - 254 

XY. A Fight Bf^tween Buffaloes - - 272 

XYL Chicquita ----- 282 

XYII. Army Mules 301 

XYIII. A Lonesome Christian - - - 314 



/ 



FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



I. 



CAPTAI]^ JINKS. 

IT is necessary to caution the reader against mis- 
apprehension at the beginning. This chapter 
does not conteniphite a discussion of the merits or 
peculiarities of that ancient gem in tlie repertory of 
opera houffe^ whicli has sometime since been sung 
and acted to its death, but which may still linger in 
the recollections of some of the eklers. But there 
is a great deal of truth told in broad burlesque; if 
it makes a palpable impression upon the public there 
must always be truth as a basis. The genius, who- 
ever he was, who wrote ''Captain Jinks," had in 
his mind a portrait, more or less truthful, when he 
concocted the atrocious jin*gle and called it a song. 
Yery few of those who have heard it, and still fewer 
of those who have sung it, ever saw anything in it 
beyond a little fun, and an op2:>ortunity for some 
stalwart actress, with startling physical development 
and a wonderful yellow wig, to mince before the 
footlights, and display her misconception of him 
who, even more than the lamented Dundreary, is 
the ideal of gentlemanly snobbery. 



10 FROXTIER ARMY SKETCIIIJS. 



As liintod, Captain Jinks is not entirely a myth; 
but there may have been many portraits of the profes- 
sional soldier in more lasting literature that were 
scarcely nearer the truth. Thackeray must have 
watched him as he sauntered down the street, and 
gone home and made a sketch of him. Dickens 
liad an inkling of him, tliough he, too, knew liim 
only from affxr. It is more than probable that the 
large class of men who are apparently idle, careless, 
dressy, nonchalant, in time of peace, and brave, 
enduring and self-sacrificing in time of war, are 
much the same tlie world over. There has ever 
been among mankind a weakness for the sound of 
the drum, the strains of martial music, and the rus- 
tle of a banner that represented a common cause, 
whatever tliat cause might be ; for the glint of 
bullion and the measured tread of battalions, and 
the touch of that slender glittering thing that in all 
time has stood for justice ami honor, and not infre- 
cpiently for that right which, with a change of its 
initial letter, means a very different thing. It is 
this common passion which makes the varied uni- 
forms of the world cover hearts very nearly alike in 
what they love and hate. 

But there is one individual of this type who is 
especially the present subject of discourse. Of 
all the soldiers of the world, he is least known on 
fashionable streets, and most seldom seen at select 
parties and in the choice seats at the opera. With 
civilization and its pleasures and occupations he has 
little to do. There are few gay seasons or long 
leaves-of-absence for him. Of all the homes along 



CAPTAIN JINKS. 11 



the far border of a growing republic, his is farthest 
and most isohited. Tie is the sohlier of a country 
that has the brightest and newest banner of all, dyed 
though it has been with the stains of many a desper- 
ate field; and those silken folds represent to him all 
there is of abstract devotion and love. It is that of 
a country which in its supreme struggle raised and 
sent to the iield the most intelligent, enduring, un- 
daunted and brilliant armies the world lias ever 
seen; which in a single year, in the midst of divided 
sentiment, could rouse in her sons all the traditional 
skill, courage, valor and patriotism which lurked in 
the hearts of a long-peaceful but fighting and glory- 
loving race. But at the end they sank again into 
the office, the sliop, and the furrow, as mysteriously 
as sank the targe and plaid of the followers of Rod- 
erick Dliu upon the mountain side; and he, the last 
remainder of the host, thinks, not without cause, 
that his cold-shouldered country has almost forgot- 
ten him. 

Under all these disadvantages, the United States 
army officer claims intimate kinship with his breth- 
ren of the buttons the world over. There are none 
who wear with more jauntiness a modest blue coat 
and the very nattiest trousers and boots, or whose 
caps are more perilously perched upon the forward 
right-hand corners of ambrosial heads. In the mat- 
ter of mustaches he excels the German, and in viva- 
city of movement he is beyond the Frenchman. He 
is a rattling shot at billiards, and very cool and 
silent at whist. He has an eye to the points of 
horses, an acute judgment as to the qualities of 



12 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

liquors, and really and truly adores womankind with 
a devotion and strength that cavils at nothing they 
may do, think, or say, and which, had he no other 
virtue, is sufficient to keep him forever in the great 
brotherhood of gentlemen. He is isolated and ut- 
terly cut off from that world which is all there is to 
most of us, and his world comprises as its chiefest 
features only arms, orders, and duty, and the apt 
surroundings he has contrived for himself in the 
midst of a thousand difficulties and disadvantages. 

But here, in mountain fastnesses and the dreary 
isolation of the wilderness, you strangely come upon 
the oidy genuine chivahy extant in American life. 
I may be taken to task for this wholesale statement ; 
for the over-busy, nervous, money-getting citizens 
of this great country claim all good qualities as 
their own. Therefore I will explain : Chivalry, in 
its essence, means not a careless but a careful regard 
for the opinions, feelings, and personal comfort of 
others, but more especially of women. Besides 
that, it means entire but polite candor, and no 
tricks in trade or anything else. It means that 
the affairs of life are conducted "on honor." Cap- 
tain Jinks in the wilderness practises this code, 
and has done so for so long that while staid and 
respectable citizens might smile at his punctilious- 
ness, they, together with their w4ves and daughters, 
would find him a very pleasant companion, and 
might do well to try to find time to imitate some 
of his very foolish airs. 

Do the gentlemen who sit a-row at attractive 
loitering-places rise up en masse when one poor 



CAPTAIN JINKS. 13 



little woman passes bj ? And if tliey do not, and 
are excused from that, are tliej ever careful lest 
some masculine phrase should reach her ear, or 
the cigar smoke should blow in her face ? Is a 
woman's request a binding law if it be a possible 
thing ? Most of these questions must be answered 
in the negative. Yery often the American gentle- 
man accosts his lady friend in the street with his 
hat over his eyes, his hands in his pockets, and 
with a lazy politeness which indicates that he is 
anxious she should not make the mistake of im- 
agining she is any better than he. 

We may go further, and, leaving out women, 
inquire how Captain Jinks possibly excels us. He 
takes off his hat in his own office or room, and 
does likewise when he comes into yours. He 
expects to be requested to seat himself, and if you 
allow him to stand he goes away and does not 
come back so long as he can avoid it. He does 
not often back-bite and insinuate, and you cannot 
always know upon your tirst acquaintance with him 
what and whom he especially dislikes and hates. 
Such things, with him, lead to rapid settlements of 
difficulties ; and Jinks is therefore, as we should all 
be, careful. There is no need of any action for 
slander where Jinks and his companions live, for 
words and opinions are supposed to be valuable, 
and are cautiously used. He will endeavor to lend 
or give you anything you ask, — but you must not 
ask. There are other things he will do upon proper 
invitation, which are not so much to his credit. A 
little sip of something out of a mahogany case is 



14 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 



seldom offered at tlie wrong time o' day. A little 
sliuffiing of a clean deck, and an unimportant trans- 
fer of currency, is generally agreeable wlien lie is 
not busy, — and he never is. Jinks is somewhat 
friyoh)us, oyer-polite, and nonchalant, and carries a 
very high nose ; but he will fight. Any intimation 
that he would not, would hasten matters very fast in 
that direction. And the ugliest antagonist in the 
world is this same tender-handed fop, because it is 
in his line of business. He stands in the same rela- 
tion to other men in this respect that the terrier 
does to other dogs ; he spends no time in carefully 
considering the size of his antagonist. Only of late 
years has the duello come to- be looked upon as 
wrong and foolish by the great majority of army 
officers. Elderly gentlemen, long since retired to 
office-chairs, have recollections of that sort which 
they sometimes mention ; and it appears that even 
in these instances death was more often bargained 
for than achieved. 

Captain Jinks is a strictly professional man, and 
after some years of military life knows more of his 
specialty — which is a good deal to know — than he 
generally gets fair credit for. There is a common 
impression that to own a commission signed b}^ the 
President, and to wear a imiform, is to be a soldier. 
Many an inchoate hero has had this impression dis- 
sipated by a few months' association with the old 
ones. The traditional routine, the customs, the 
business, and the exact drill, require years in their 
mastery. The army is almost wholly governed by 
an unwritten code, which has, in its place, as much 



CAPTAIN JINKS. 15 



binding force as the common law. You would not 
suspect that Jinks was ever a business man ; jet 
the complicated system of accountability for public 
property requires something very little short of 
business talent for its proper comprehension. It 
is the most endless and intricate bundle of red tape 
imaginable, at least to the beginner ; but, if not 
clear, it is at least accurate, to the practised quarter- 
master. The government is an uncompromising 
creditor, and will stop Jinks's pay for an old camp- 
kettle, ten years after tlie loss occurred, if things 
come to the worst. Ke is accountable for all the 
houses, fuel, forage, animals, tools, wagons, and 
scattered odds and ends of a post as large as a 
respectable village, the residence of some hundreds 
of people. They are all on his "papers," and must 
\>Q cared for and kept straight. Every company com- 
mander must of necessity be a business man, and 
has a running account with a hundred men. Mili- 
tary efficiency means money, in the sense that there 
can be no efficiency without it ; and the iirst quali- 
fication of an officer of any grade or station is econ- 
omy and good judgment in the care of property and 
the expenditure of funds. 

ISTor is this all. Like an editor, Jinks must have 
a very varied and extensive fund of general infor- 
mation. He is alike autocrat and justice of the peace. 
He is the head and leader of a hundred careless, 
irresponsible men, who in time beconje human 
automatons, obeying orders and doing nothing more. 
He learns, through his intercourse with them, to 
know intimately each one, though at a distance. 



16 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



He is often called upon to exercise the functions of 
physician, priest, and executor, to the same man. 
He must know how to exercise at once kindness and 
firmness, and to command the fullest respect with 
some degree of love. If there is a foible, a weak- 
ness, a want of courage or capacity, on the part of 
the commander, be sure the ranks will find it out. 
Jinks is a tyrant as well, and the fact need not be 
(lisiruised from a thousand who know at least that 
much of him. So are railroad managers, the heads 
of manufacturing establishments, and "bosses" the 
world over. But the even tenor of his tyranny is 
assured by those "regulations" under which the 
common soldier's rights and privileges are as fully 
guaranteed to him as are those of his commander. 
Jinks and his companions have made some of the 
most daring and careful explorations of modern 
times. They traversed the mountain passes of an 
unknown world more than fifty years ago, and 
mapped and described the routes of travel and im- 
migration long before railways and immigration 
were thought of. They did it faithfully and skil- 
fully, and without any reward. There is even at 
this late day a more accurate knowledge of the cli- 
mates, characteristics, geography, and natural history 
of the world west of the Missouri, among the officers 
of the army, than among all the savaiis. 

Perhaps it may not be uninteresting to know how 
Captain Jinks lives. The changeless empire of 
monotony and silence hedges him in. Nowhere 
witliin reaching distance are any of those things 
that the majority of mankind value most. He has 



CAPTAIN JINKS. 17 



but to go a little waj from the flag-staff to be utterly 
alone. Yet, so far as liis little acre of actual occu- 
pancy goes, he has transformed the desert. Here 
is a quadrangular space, as neatly kept as a parlor 
floor. In the centre floats always the sheeny repre- 
sentative of that for which the soldier lives. On 
every hand are the oddly-shaped houses, sometimes 
handsome and costly, often only log cabins or 
adobes. But you will find nothing like squalor 
within. There is comfort and neatness always, and 
not infrequently elegance, and a very successful 
attempt at luxury. As a rule. Jinks and his wife 
care little for the house itself, if only the furnishing 
reaches the proper standard of luxury and taste. 
There are books, music, curtains, carpets, a very 
well-furnished table, and a very fair display of china 
and silver. Jinks is something of an epicure, and 
frequently dines upon dainties which an alderman 
could not procure. He saves himself from an hour 
of inanity every afternoon by thinking what he will 
have for dinner, and then asks every disengaged 
person he can find to come and help him eat it. 
You wonder, as you watch this hospitable soldier in 
his wanderings, where lie obtains the spice of con- 
tent. In these houses are to be found elegant and 
well-dressed women, though peradventure their 
gowns may not be in the latest fashion, and their 
social gossip not of the latest sensation. 

Around this nucleus cluster the thousand belong- 
ings of military civilization. Horses neigh in popu- 
lous stables, and mules perform their characteristic 
antics in the corral. The sound of hammer and file 



18 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

is heard, and the woodvard and warehouse are 
open. There is the trader's store — an immensely 
attractive spot, which may be called the club-room 
of the border. There the loafing instinct which 
Jinks has in common with the rest of mankind is 
gratified by the clatter of ivory balls and the aroma 
of tobacco. These are the only features of Jinks's 
life which make that life like that of the world to 
which he no longer pertains, and which, with all its 
enjoyable things, he has by no means forgotten, 
although it seems to have almost forgotten him. 
There is no danger that he will ever degenerate. 
The discipline of his daily life would keep him from 
that. His military ceremonies are performed in full 
dress, and midnight on the lonely guard-beat sees 
the untimely ceremony of "grand rounds" per- 
formed with as much punctiliousness as though in 
view of the commander-in-chief. 

But the incorrigible Captain Jinks will swagger, 
will insist on regarding all professions below par in 
comparison with his, and will so persist in carrying 
an air of careless superiority with him wherever he 
goes that the more sombre-clad and fogyish portions 
of mankind will look slightly askance at him, and in 
some instances conceive quite a dislike to him. But 
we must be allowed to remark that he would be 
rather a poor soldier if he were not more or less 
guilty of these things. It is only when he is placed 
among civilians that they are noticeable; and they 
are the direct result of an isolated professional train- 
ing. Is not the sailor known of all men at sight ? 
And did anyone ever think of it as strange that he 



CAPTAIN JINKS. 19 



was not ill all particulars like themselves ? A man 
who has spent years in the acquirement of certain 
unconscious personal traits and ways cannot be ex- 
pected to divest himself of them as he would put off 
a garment. He is no soldier who is not proud of his 
uniform, and in nine cases in ten the American 
officer will be found to be an honest man, and in the 
strictest sense a gentleman. His life in peace is one 
long preparation for that hour of his country's need 
when he shall lead up to the battery the blue ranks 
he has so often drilled, and follow into the jaws of 
death the starry emblem he has so often gathered in 
his arms as it came down at the sunset gun. Every 
year he endures hardships at the camp-lire and upon 
the march, of which he gives no sign as you see him 
passing by. We cannot blame him if he be, or 
seem, a little proud of the slender blade which, after 
all, is not his but his country's. Let us not be too 
much mistaken in our Captain Jinks. Of such as 
he — just such foppish, careless fellows — have ere 
now been made great generals, lamented heroes, 
statesmen, and presidents. Useless ornament though 
he might be if the millennium were only come, and 
reminder of the strength of monarchies rather than 
of peaceful republics, the time has been when a few 
more available Jinkses would have saved the coun- 
try many a life and many a million of treasure, when, 
in impending peril, we scarcely knew the equipment 
of a camp or the duties of a picket-guard. 

It would be easy to discourse upon the lights and 
shadows of Jinks's life in a manner that, while it 
would do no harm, and might even be considered 



20 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

flattering to liim, he would resent as an unwarranta- 
ble intrusion into his private aifairs; for one of his 
characteristics is, that he has never seemed anxious 
to liave himself and his belongings — -his tastes, 
traits, loves, hates, and the details of liis private 
life — inquired into and discussed by mankind. He 
has, I think, seldom been lieard to complain that 
people do not understand him. If it is because he 
has long ceased to expect that they should, the con- 
clusion has given him little pain, for he has also 
ceased to care. The army is, indeed, a little world 
by itself, tliat is unaffected by stocks and trade, by 
flood, fire, or disaster, by changes in politics or revi- 
vals of religion. In it the lines are drawn very 
straight, and are not often crossed. It has its own 
news, its own gossip, its own penalties, and its es- 
pecial pleasures. One would not suppose that the 
element of domesticity had much place there; yet 
under singular difficulties this is one of its strongest 
features. Jinks, as a family man, seems capable of 
mingling with great skill the characters of pater 
familias and the occasional roisterer. He has a 
vivid conception and a keen appreciation of home 
for its own sake — a home that he never made and 
cannot own, that does not suit him and cannot be 
altered, and that he leaves, in his innumerable pil- 
grimages from post to post, without a sigh, cheered 
by the hope of a better. Yet one may recall, among 
his recollections of that frontier that is a thousand 
miles beyond the crudest civilization, homes that 
were bright with the refinements of the highest type 
of our social life, that were filled with cheerfulness 



CAPTAIN JINKS. 21 



and wanned bj the indescribable felicities that made 
the place restful and luxuriant with that rest and 
hixnry that do not depend upon the price of the fur- 
niture. Jinks has absorbed all the good there is in 
the peculiar form of aristocracy he affects. His 
dining-table possesses a social and material charm 
quite irresistible to all who are so fortunate as to get 
their legs under it. One goes away and asks him- 
self where all these things came from, and ever after 
remembers that spot in the coyote-haunted desert 
which offered him so restful a glimpse of the beauty 
of woman and home, and a taste of the clean hos])i- 
tality of a gentleman about whom there was neither 
effort nor pretence. 

Aladdin is a character of childish fable. There 
are no fairies; alchemy was a dream; men are oidy 
men. From whence does Jinks derive the myste- 
rious quality that enables him to survive the crudest 
associations, the wildest surroundings, the hardest 
fare upon the weariest marches, the slenderest re- 
sources, the most thankless services, and still remain 
the inimitable Jinks — clean, quiet, nonchalant, 
transforming the spot where he is bidden to abide, 
changing all the sensations of the place where he 
has pitched his tents ? It seems a marked pecu- 
liarity of the American soldier. He is Jinks uncon- 
sciously. That celebrated charge of "conduct 
unbecoming an officer and a gentleman," upon which 
the plumed and buttoned and intensely official court- 
martial assembles, hints at the deepest infamy of 
military life ; and that is a most damning specifica- 
tion, if proven, which asserts that "in this the said 



22 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

Lieutenant So-and-so wilfallv lied." It is so 
arranged that Captain Jinks may be guilty of a thou- 
sand peccadilloes ; may spend his nights at poker, 
and his leisure hours at any gallantry that may be 
at hand; but he must do his whole duty in camp 
and field, and privately and officially must keep 
himself clear of any possible entanglement in sly 
deception or private crookedness. He does not 
always succeed in this; errare est hiimanum. But 
then he gets himself cashiered. 

If Jinks were better known, he might travel long 
and far upon his character as "a good fellow." He 
may if he will, and often does, acquire an inexhausti- 
ble fund of anecdote and personal reminiscence, 
lie knows well the by-ways and corners, not of 
cities, but of the wide domain of the republic. The 
dews and damps of innumerable midnights, the 
grays of a thousand mornings, the shadows of moun- 
tain pines, the wide loneliness of trackless wastes, 
the vicissitudes of the camp and the march, the 
familiar tonch of earth and the companionship of 
nature, have all combined in liis education, and 
allied themselves with that imaginativeness of his 
without which he would be but a mere frontiersman 
like the rest. There are few reminiscences more 
charming tlian those he can call up when he will, 
and it seems to please him to clothe the most dole- 
ful and disappointing of his experiences in the garb ' 
of the ridiculous, and to burlesque the tragic ele- 
ment of all his adventures by flood and field. 

There seems to be, in Jinks' s case, neither ade- 
quate incentive nor sufficient reward for the deeper- 



CAPTAIN JINKS. 23 



ate bravery in behalf of country and cause which he 
often displays. There are no spectators, no press 
bulletins, no medals or stars, not even promotion, as 
his reward. . Plain and mountain-pass have wit- 
nessed many a heroic death that was never men- 
tioned in the newspapers, and that no one cared for 
but a wife, a mother, or a far-away sweetheart. 
Many a pallid face amid the grasses of the prairie, 
and many a bloody blue coat, have the stars looked 
down upon after a day of thirst and hopelessness 
and desperate defence. Unknown amid the eter- 
nal silences that are his battle-fields, there is many a 
mound unmarked by so much as an inscription, 
washed b}^ the rains and digged by the wolves, 
where some liero of the republic sleeps. He at 
least does his first and last great duty unhesitatingly 
and always. So long as there was a cartridge or 
a man, there is no instance of vacillation or surren- 
der in the annals of far western warfare. As Custer 
died, with all his men around him, so are all the 
Jinkses expected to go when the occasion calls. The 
universal civilian should remember, and be no more 
than just, that his fair record of courage has never 
had a stain, that his life challenges the admiration of 
every man whose heart swells at the story of daunt- 
less valor, and that he is, after all, as fair an exam- 
ple as our civilization can show of what, for want of 
a better name, we call a Gentleman. 



II. 



JOKIsrADA DEL MUEETO. 

O'NE evening, about sunset, the vehicle v^^hich is 
by courtesy called a coach, drawn by four little 
mules, with its driver and expressman, and four pas- 
sengers inside, started out of the obscure village of 
Peralta on that southward journey which few who 
have made it will ever forget, and which afterwards 
seems a strange adventure, undertaken under cover 
of darkness, and for some purpose that was itself a 
dream. 

Peralta is the very dogsburg of a land of squalid 
towns. It is as though it had been gently shaken 
in a blanket, and indiscriminately dropped in the 
midst of a few acres of sand. Sand is there an ele- 
ment. It blows through every chink and cranny, 
and lies ankle deep in the street. It pervades all 
that is eaten and drunk and breathed, and lies in 
windrows and heaps in the meandering street. This 
is all in accordance with the Mexican idea; for a few 
hundred yards away the ground is grass-grown and 
hard, and that which stands in the changing sand 
from chance might easily have been placed upon 
solid ground by purpose. Worse than all, it stands 
at the hither end of that ninety miles of treeless 
and waterless wilderness that to many has been in 
fact all that its name implies: Jornada del muerto — 
" the journey of death." 



JORNADA DEL MUERTO. 25 

Of the four passengers, one was a medical officer of 
tlie army, one was a trader, one a man wlio was any- 
thing and had no characteristics save that he wore a 
bhie bh^use and had a gold bar on his shoulder. 
The fourth, a large man in middle life, who sat with 
his back to the front and his long limbs thrown 
across the middle seat, was as evidently a genuine 
borderer as though that fact had been placarded 
upon him. His great beard was plentifully sprin- 
kled with gray, and the soles of his huge boots, 
upright before his audience, seemed as thougli they 
might serve as tombstones should he chance to fol- 
low an old-time fashion of his kind and be buried in 
them. His slouch hat was pulled low over a pair of 
gray eyes and a kindly and honest face, and he held 
his Winchester gun across his knee with that con- 
stant yet careless grasp which is one of the small 
signs betokening the man accustomed to danger and 
to the vigilance which in these regions becomes a 
habit. 

The gold and purple and amber faded, and the 
far snow grew pink and gray, then whiter than be- 
fore in the starlight, and soon there was nothing of 
earth in the scene save the tall cactuses that took 
fantastic shapes as they nodded against the glow of 
the horizon, and the vague and misty undulations 
of a wilderness that, clothed in night and silence, 
seemed a part of some other and unreal world. 

Four women together, strange to each other, and 
without some slight counterpoise of masculinity, 
would either have kept silence for a long time at 
first, or have politely and distantly chatted. But 



26 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

men do not so; and each of our travellers liad in a 
sliort time given liis fellows some vague idea of who 
he was, where he was born, and what he liked best 
in men, horses, climates, and cookery; — not specifi- 
cally and in order, but as men are sure to talk of 
such things. Then comes a little modest bragging 
on the part of each; and he who goes too far in that 
is straightway snubbed into ill-humor or docility, as 
the case may be, either of which conditions answers 
the purpose equally well. After this comes silence, 
yawning, and finally sleep. Only part of this pro- 
gramme could be carried out here. Sociability was a 
necessity; for if four men sleep on the Jornada, 
popular tradition would make it seem probable that 
they might not awake again. I^o man in those days 
became absorbed in his neighbor's story or his own, 
to the extent that his ear was not also open to the 
far-away galloping or the sudden shout that pro- 
claims that ubiquitous Apache who is so much 
dreaded and talked about and so seldom seen. 

The desire for something outside of one's own 
ever-revolving thoughts is as common as humanity. 
To this end is all that immense literature that is 
born in a night and dies in the morning. For the 
gratification of the appetite which is insatiable, are 
the remotest corners of the earth ransacked, and all 
that is done and sufi'ered in all climes and races con- 
densed into paragraphs and laid at even the day- 
laborer's door. But where this is impossible and 
unknown, its place is taken by an art the oldest and 
most graceful in the world — the art of story-telling. 
To the dweller in remote and unfrequented corners 



JORNADA DEL MUERTO. 27 

of the earth the ability to wander easily through the 
past of his life, to talk of the eternal ego witlioiit 
egoism, to cause his limited audience to see his 
situations as plainly as he remembers them, and to 
call out the laugh or the curse which is his applause 
and reward, is considered as a matter of course. 
The silent man is locdvcd upon with general sus- 
picion, and has few friends. But no man is asked 
formally or in turn to tell a story. He begins as 
soon as he can get an audience by cutting in upon 
his neighbr)r's fast-waning discourse, and he con- 
tinues through a running fire of comments, jokes, 
and minor adventures. This, with the addition of 
some show of form, is the much-vaunted Indian 
oratory. This is that art of talking in which rough 
men sometimes attain a smoothness and proficiency 
that might well be envied in the politest circles of 
the great world in which it is popularly supposed 
everything is done that is ever done, everything 
known that is within the bounds of human attain- 
ment and endeavor. It is the art that is simplest 
and most attractive where form is absent, and where 
humor and pathos lack egoism and consciousness. 

For the most part, the large man was silent. His 
companions seemed none of them to be of the class 
with which he was most at home. The trader told 
of events which had occurred in a country neighbor- 
hood in some Eastern state, and duly mentioned 
the names and relationships of all his characters, 
with other important and interesting details. The 
medical man told of college adventures and flirta- 
tions, and touched a little upon science. The man 



28 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

who was notliing and had no particular character, 
sat silent, only occasional!}" throwing in an interjec- 
tion or an exclamation of mild astonishment. He 
was not jet acclimated, and his course of action 
undoubtedly tended to make him popular with the 
doctor and the trader. 

I'inally, that waning blood-red morning moon — 
that ghost of brightness so seldom seen by a sleepy 
world, and which seems to steal around the A^erge 
of the universe at late hours to avoid observation 
and remark — began to show her gibbous face above 
the horizon and add a little light. The dreary 
undulations of the landscape began to grow more 
distinct. Thirty miles of the journey lay behind ; 
and the lonely backward track, and the still lonelier 
route to come, oppressed the party with that vague 
and weary uneasiness that one at least of them had 
never felt before. 

But now a change seemed to have come over the 
big and silent frontiersman. As his companions 
grew silent he grew active and uneasy. He peered 
curiously out upon the road, and seemed intent 
upon the outlines of the hills. He arose and stood 
with his foot upon the step, and looked ahead and 
behind, and close beside the track. He excited the 
curiosity of his companions, who had long since set 
him down as stupid ; and they improved the oppor- 
tunity presented for new amusement. 

"Ever been here before? " said the doctor. 

"You bet." 

" Oh ! " said the trader ; "lived here ? " 



JORNADA DEL 3IUERT0. 29 

"I rec'n I spent ten tliousand dollars not a mile 
from this 'ere spot." 

'^Looking for it?" 

The big man bent his head, and doubled his 
huge figure beneath the curtain, lounged back into 
his seat, drew a long breath, pushed back his hat, 
and remarked : 

^'I'U tell ye all about it." 

There was the general and impressive silence of 
consent and waiting. 

''I've heerd you boys talk for about six hours. 
]S'ow I'm a goin' to talk myself, but I wouldn't 
'nless this 'ere place didn't remind me of it. Fust 
of all, there aint notliin' — nary thing — in this 'ere 
that people calls grit, an' pluck, an' sense, an' all 
that. There's nothin' but luck — jest luck. 

"I come out from Missouri to Californy in them 
times they calls '49, — I'm a forty-niner myself. 
They was flush times then, an' money was as plenty 
as water, an' plentier. But still a man couldiTt 
save nothin', an' after a year or two I hadn't much 
more money than I've got now, wich the same aint 
much. But wile I stayed tliere I spent more, an' 
had more fun an' more flglits, an' cared less, than 
any man in all Californy. An' then, as was nat'ral 
in sech cases, things got to goin' bad with me, an' 
times to git close, an' in '5-1 I come down through 
Arizony an' them parts. In Tooson, in two weeks, 
I won ten thousan' dollars at poker, — jest luck 
ag'in. Then I stopped short. I laid low for three 
or four days, till I got a chance, an' then come on 
to this 'ere infernal countrv with mv monev. I had 



30 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

a mind to stop gamblin' an' try an' make a livin' 
like ^ome folks I've lieerd of — -honestly. I knowed 
a man's luck didn't do liim a good turn more'n 
once, an' I concluded to go back on it in time. I 
got down there to Cruces, an' some fellers pusuaded 
me to come out here to this infernal hornado an' 
dig fur water. A passel of us come out here, an' 
found a swale." 

Here the speaker painfully extricated himself 
from the combinations of the vehicle, crowded him- 
self out again, and for some moments was engaged 
in looking for some feature of the landscape. 

''I thought I seed the place," he said, as he 
resumed his seat. 

" Where you left the money? " said the doctor. 

''This thing I'm a tellin' ain't no joke to 7?i(?," 
he quietly said. "Both of you young fellers has 
said somethin' smart now about the on'y pile I 
ever had, an' the next smart thing I sli'd like to 
say myself ef possible. As I was say in', we found 
a swale where it looked damp. Me an' my party 
we dug, an' dug. There ain't no man knows any 
better'n me how to make a hole in the groun'. I 
larnt that in Californy. But we didn't find no 
water. Afore we wus through, we dug all over 

this desert, an' finally I tumbled to the fact 

that there wa'nt no water, an' w'at's wus, no more 
money. ' ' 

"Is that so?" chirped the medical man. 

"AVait till I tell ye. D — n it, it riles me to 
think of it!" bellowed the speaker. '-That wan't 
the wust of it. Afore that missable fool diggin', I 



JORNADA DEL JIUFBTO. 31 

had gone an' — an' married. She wus the puttiest 
thing in all this diggins. I tell je I ain't never seed 
no woman to suit me sence, an' she's — gentlemen^ 
she's been dead this fourteen year, an' that's the 
wust luck I ever had." 

The story-teller cleared his throat and went on : 
"Well, arter that I went down to the settlements 
ag'in, an' then the guv'ment sent some people here, 
an' thei/ dug, an' dug, an' didn't hnd no water — nary 
drop. The hull thing looked like a bad job, an' 
folks made up their minds to go without water. 
Plenty of 'em did. This 'ere road 's been the death 
of many a mule, to say nothin' of other folks. An' 
now w'at do ye think they tell me in Santy Fee 'i 
Wy, they say a man named suthin', I forgit w'at, — 
a feller that never had no luck, an' hadn't orter 
had, — come out here 'cos he kinder hadn't nowhere 
else to go, an' commenced a diggin', an' struck water 
in forty foot. He has a ranch now, an' a guv' men t 
contract. Congress give him all the wuthless land in 
sight, an' he's sometimes sober, an' makes lots o' 
money. Ain't that luck ? " 

The speaker seemed irritable, and brought his 
great fist down with a thump upon the seat beside 
him. 

" Why, yes," said the doctor, " everybody knows 
that; we'll reach there about five o'clock. I wish I 
was there now." 

Silent men sometimes make up for lost time when 
once they are started ; and the speaker continued : 

''An' do ye know w'at I come down here for? 
Don't? Then I'll perceed to tell ye. 'Cause I'm a 



32 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

fool. There's people as visits graveyards an' things 
w'ere ther friends is. I'm a goin' to visit my cinie- 
try. I've tried everytliin' else sence I was there 
last, an' sometimes I've concluded I'd nigh forgot all 
about it. 'Pears to me I'm a gittin' old now, an' the 
hankerin' comes stronger. I don't know purcisely 
where the grave is I'm a huntin'. P'raps there 
ain't none; but I want to see the place where I lost 
— lost my woman I hadn't had a year." 

The big man seemed not so strong as he appeared. 
He was silent a moment, and nervously fanned him.- 
self with his hat. Then he sat for a few minutes 
looking dreamily out upon the vast plain, and in the 
midst of his reverie muttered disconnected anathe- 
mas upon the Apaches. After being left alone by 
the rest for awhile, he began again : 

''Ye see, I went back to the settlements frum 
here, an' jined a party goin' back to Californy. I 
tuk one more chance, an' owned one team out'n 
the twenty-odd there wus in the train, — ^me an' my 
wife. I wan't broke any then. I wus big an' 
strong, an' didn't mind my luck much, it seemed 
like. We got a start early in September, an' wus a 
goin' back by way of Arizony, naterally. Thar is 
a place about a hundred mile from here on t'other 
trail, called somebody's canon — the alliiredest place 
fui Injuns in the world. We cam])ed at a spring at 
this eend all night, an' airly in the mornin' started 
through. Arter we got ak)ng a little ways, at a 
suddint turn in the road, the fust team come chuck 
up ag'in a barricade o' rocks, an' a swarm o' 'Paches 
come down on us frum all sides. We W passed a 



JORNADA DEL MUERTO. 33 

passel o' soldiers on the road, but as luck ud hev it, 
of course tliey wa'n't there. That ere, gentle??^^?^, 
wus the wust massacre that ever I've knowed of. 
Tliere wa'nt no help, an' they jest lied the drop on 
us. I 'member at the first, seein' some o' the 
women jump out'n tlie wagons, an' run a screamin' 
down amongst the chapparal, a trjin' to hide. I 
wus up in the lead, an' started back to where my 
outfit wus, fust thing. I never got tliere. Suthin' 
or somebody struck me over the head from behind." 

Here the speaker added greatly to the delineation 
of his narrative by leaning forward and bidding his 
auditors place their fingers in a deep and ugly scar 
upon his head. 

"I fell down, an' I rec'lect gittin' up ag'in an' 
riinnin' on an' on. It seemed as though I never got 
to where I wanted to, an' I turned dizzy, an' com- 
menced a gittin' blind. But I kep' a goin', till all of 
a suddint I forgot everytliiir. Wiien I come to my 
senses it must 'a been a week arterwards. I never 
edzackly knowed, but it wus on a narrer bed in a 
orspital. Ye see, them soldiers keni along arter 
us — arter everybody wus killed. But they found 
me somewhere, and toted ine along wi' 'em, an' one 
day I kinder w^oke up, a lyin' on this 'ere bed, an' a 
feller in a uniform wus a holdin' of my wrist, an' a 
lookin' down at me, an' a smilin' as ef he war nigh 
tickled to death. I tell you," with a glance toward 
the doctor, "A^? wus a doctor as knowed his bizness. 
I crawled roun' that place till I was middlin' strong 
agin', and kep' a thinkin' it all over. From all I 
could liear, I concluded I was the only man left. I 
3 



Stt FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

wus riled, an' I went an' 'listed in the Third Cav'lry 
a purpus for to kill Injuns. I didn't keer fur nuthin' 
else fur a long time, an' I sarved out five years 'list- 
ment. Then I went back to Californv. But I ain't 
had no luck. I ain't done no good fur years. I'm 
a thinkin' now contin'ally o' that day in the canon. 
I tell ye, sometimes I think maybe some o' them 
women got away. 'Tain't so; I know^ 'tain't so, an' 
it's no use to specerlate. But she wus secli a purty 
thing, an' sly, an' smart. But what makes me think 
o' her is bey ant that. Ye see she wa'n't very well, 
an' wus ailin' a little, an' — '' 

He did not finish the sentence, but leaned for- 
ward and placed his face betw^een his great hands 
and was silent. But after awhile he resumed the 
tale, to which thus far there had been no replies or 
questions. 

" Gentlem<^n, 'twouldn't be no use fur any of ye 
to tell me I'm a fool. I've been a thinkin' o' this 
fur fourteen year, an' now it's got to be thet I ain't 
good fur nothin' else. Other men has ther young- 
sters, an' never thinks of it ; but I can't hear a 
little 'un cry — ^ wich I hain't often — 'thout gittin' 
kind o' weak. But ther's one thing I kin' do ; I 
kin go back an' find that place in the canon. I've 
as good a right to visit my fam'ly cimetry as any 
man a livin', an' I'm a goin' to do it." But his 
voice grew tremulous as he added, in a milder tone, 
"But I'd give all that ten thousan' an' all the water 
on the hornado, ef I cud on'y see, jest once, that 
baby that never wus born." 

;None of the men to whom he had spoken were 



JOHN ABA BEL MUERTO. 35 



dull, but all had evidently been mistaken in their 
conception of this man's character. He was now 
invested with a degree of interest that had not at 
first attached to him. So f\ir as thev knew, he was 
the sole survivor of one of the historic massacres of 
the country. They silently respected the story, 
and the feelings of one to whom it seemed to have 
been a brooding memory for so many years. The 
medical man, at least, was a gentleman of some 
learning, culture, and delicacy of feeling. He 
divined tlie vulnerable and very tender spot upon 
this coarse giant, and now perhaps felt the pecu- 
liar leaning toward him which all his cloth expe- 
rience in regard to what bids fair to prove a s])ecial 
case. 

''See here, my friend," said he, "who told you 
that your — ah, your wife — was certainly killed? 
I wouldn't raise your hopes, you know ; but then 
there's no telling about such things unless they 
have been actually proven. Now, I have heard 
that there were survivors of that massacre still 
living somewhere in the country. You are alive, 
you see, and — ah, well, you can't 'most always 
tell." He had thought lie would say something 
comforting, and had broken down and ended with 
an .expression that, critically considered, was little 
short of ordinary slang. But presently he contin- 
ued : "Now, you see, the chances are that if things 
Avere as you state, that — ah, in view of the scare 
and the excitement, the little one would come into 
the world without any great delay, and if the 
mother was very strong, you know, why, such a 



36 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

thing is not impossible as that you might yet see 
the " 

He suddenly stopj)ed, for the frontiersman was 
leaning forward in his seat, and with quick breath 
was drinking every ftiteful word. "My God!" he 
said, "do ye think so? Air you in yearnest? 
Nobody told me she was dead — and everybody 
. 'But she is — she is; an' ef she wa'nt, 
it wouldn't know sech as me." 

For a few moments, everybody sat silent. The 
doctor seemed trying to look, as closely as the dark- 
ness would permit, into the countenance of the man 
in whose mind hope very dim and far, and despair 
very imminent and immediate, seemed struggling 
for the mastery. But at last he seemed to have 
come to a conclusion, and beginning very cau- 
tiously, remarked : 

"I have travelled this road many times. I know 
of such a case as this would seem to be, not far 
from here. Everybody knows of it, in fact. I am 
satisfied, my friend, that your journey may not be 
for nothing — I say may not be. I am very cer — " 
He stopped again, for the big man seemed to be 
getting into a dazed condition, rubbing his eyes, 
and pulling himself together, as one who believes 
he has been dreaming. The doctor placed his 
hand upon his arm. "Be calm," he said; "I 
will tell you all I know, now that I have begun." 

"All what?" thundered die frontiersman. "Say 
it quick an' fast, an' be done with it. How am I 
to live tliisaway ? An' here, you, there wus one o' 



JORNADA DEL MUERTO. 37 



you doctors as saved my wutliless life a long ago. 
Fur God's sake, don't anotlier of ye kill me.'' 

'TU tell you all I know," said the doctor, 
"after breakfast. Meantime, my friend, if you 
don't wisli anotlier of my tribe to take charge of 
you, you must be calm. You are no child; you 
should be able to restrain yourself if you wish to be 
considered a man.'' 

Thereupon the medical man tried to divert the 
channels of conversation. He was not successful. 
The party was constrained and silent, and the big 
man looked out upon a landscape to which the 
growing light added no charm, with an expression 
upon Ids face that made more than one of the party 
pity him. 

The short summer night had faded, and that rare 
first touch of sunlight upon mountain snow, which 
more than anything in nature bears the similitude 
of a kiss, began to appear. The tired beasts seemed 
to take new life, and i)ushed eagerly on. Far in 
the distance could be faintlv heard the first crowinir 
of the cocks, the bleating of goats, and the cry of 
asses, while the thin blue breakfast-smoke could be 
seen curling from the chimney of the little adobe 
castle which was the lucky man's ranch. 

All that the frontiersman had heard of him was 
true. He had a well of unfailing water, that was 
better than all the i^old mines of the surrounding 
mountains, and a government contract, and was 
happy in his first luck. He ushered the four trav- 
ellers into the house as though he had known them 
for years. He had a j)rot('(j('e^ the child of a Mexican 



38 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

woman who was a dependent of the establislinient, 
whom lie considered one of the attractions of the 
phace, and of wliom lie never ceased to talk. For 
he was of that class commonly known as "good- 
hearted," and was capable of a generous apprecia- 
tion of things not always and entirely his own. 
When the child came into the room at these early 
breakftxsts provided for passengers in the stage, he 
always dilated upon the girl and her peculiar his- 
tory. The facts bore him out. She was a creature 
of fourteen, who looked eighteen. She had an 
enormous quantity of that red hair which is crimson 
in the sunshine, and eyes of the variety which, for 
want of some better term, are called brown, being 
in reality both brown and black. She was round, 
lithe, graceful, and, in fact, a very favorable speci- 
men of the being who is sometimes the result of the 
admixture of the blood of two dissimilar races 

"Do you see that garl, gentlemen?" said he. 
"That's the loveliest little thing in Mexico, and 
differs from them all in her birthplace and her 
nussin'. Her mother's my cook, an' notliin' to me 
more 'n that; an' I've plenty of my own, but they 
was born in a house." And therewith the garrulous 
good fellow hurried away to attend to some neces- 
sary affair, intending to hasten back and finish his 
proud tale. 

The four travellers sat and watched, with some 
pardonable impatience, the preparations for break- 
fast. The doctor stealthily kept his eye upon the 
big frontiersman, to whom the sight of the pretty 
child did not seem to be in any way interesting. 



JORNADA DEL MUERTO. 89 

From time to time the mother entered and busied 
herself witli the aifairs of breakfast. She seemed 
an almost middle-aged Mexican woman of the better 
class, care-worn and wrinkled with the world and 
its struggle, as all her kind are when youth fades. 
She was accustomed to strangers, and did not per- 
ceive that the frontiersman had regarded her from 
her first entrance with a dreamy stare. 11\\q frijole.s 
and the cliile-con-carne had occupied her attention, 
and she started when the big man rose up in her 
way, his gray eyes glittering and liis lips white, and 
faintly spoke a word in Spanish —so faintly that 
none understood. 

She did not let fall the brown dish she held in 
her hand ; she was ignorant of all nerves and proper 
sensations. But she placed it upon the table, and 
looked steadily at him. Her face began to pale a 
little with fear and horror. As slow recognition 
dawned upon her, she sank down upon the floor 
and turned away her head, praying rapidly after the 
fashion of her race. '-''Ave Maria !^^ she muttered. 
'•^Soy la desdicha de este mitndo. Soy tic hija dban- 
donada, me socerras en tu merced^ y me salvas de 
las visitas de los aparecidos; ah^ Madre de Crista^ 
me salvas I ' ' 

"But I am no ghost," he said. "Don't you know 
me ? Wy, now look here, — say, don't go 'way. 
I'm drunk, or crazy, or dreamin', or else you are 
'tny wifey 

She rose while he spoke, and the look of terror 
changed to one of anxiety and consternation. " Oh, 
go away," she said, in her lisping English. "It is 



40 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



very long. Tengo otro hombre^ y mochos mucha- 
chos/^ And mingling her Spanish and English, 
horrified and distressed, she passed backward 
throngli the door. What wonder ? Dead husbands 
are not wanted to return and interrupt the arrange- 
ments that liave come about through their deaths. 
This poor woman had a second living husband, even 
tlien in tlie door-yard, and acted as many another 
would have done in a situation so strange and so 
improbable. 

Then the proprietor returned, and attempted to 
finish his interesting remarks upon the child. He 
had at last got t;,o the curious manner of her birth in 
the chapparal, when she came in again. The fron- 
tiersman -listened as one who dreams. His eyes 
rested lovingly upon the child, who knew and cared 
as little for him as though he were indeed dead in 
the canon. 

"Chicquita," said he, as he advanced and lield 
out to her a trembling liand, "do ye know who I 
am? Yer mother does. W'y, now,, come, — can't 
ye?" His fond and confident expression changed 
to one of pitiable suff"ering, as the girl ran from him 
with a scared and wondering look and took refuge 
beside the proprietor. 

"Look here, Mister," said that person, "I don't 
know you, but ye're actin' like a fool. What are ye 
a skeerin' this one for? Now stop yer foolin' an' eat 
yer breakfast ef ye want to, an' ef not, be done with 
yer nonsense in my house." 

"She's my own little one,", gasped the other. 



JORNADA DEL MUERTO. 41 

"I'm lier ftitlier. Go call her mother to- tell ye, — 
Jill' mind yer jaw, or I'll — " 

Tlieii tlie woman, with red eyes and a face in 
wliicli tlie evidence of a strange contest was visible, 
again entered the room. 

"Ko, Sefior," she said, ''I not know you, — go." 
And she sank into the uttermost corner of the room, 
and covering her face with her dingy shawl, rocked 
herself to and fro. 

The proprietor seemed reassured, and advanced 
upon his antagonist. "Who are ye?" he said. 
"The man you claim to be is as dead as Moses. 
He wus dead w'en this garl wus born. Ye can't 
play no sicli stuff as that. She won't look at ye. 
Chuck, who is this feller, anyhow ? " 

The spoiled beauty looked at the frontiersman 
disdainfully, contemplated him for a moment, and 
broke into a careless laugh. The victim sank into 
a seat like one stricken. The actions of the child 
were but natural, for the instinctive recognition of 
relationships is but a fable. The broken man, de- 
nied by his wife, and derided by the child of whose 
dear existence he had dreamed for so many years, 
insulted and defied by an officious stranger, crept 
away and hid himself in the coach, and was there 
when it passed out upon its onward journey. 

The remaining miles were passed in the glow 
and cheerfulness of day; but the party was now a 
silent and constrained one. There sat with them a 
man who seemed ver\" old, and who was seemingly 
crushed by that century of suffering which it is pos- 
sible to concentrate into a single hour. 



42 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

There came an autumn afternoon in that sai^e 
year, when the yellowing leaves beside the ashen 
stream trembled in a wind that bore the slightest 
breath of cold. The imperturbable mountains still 
lay about the scene, casting long shadows across the 
low valley. He had gone to the bad, and had gone 
very quickly. But his stage-journey friend stuck to 
him while the colossal strength gradually became 
childish weakness, and the pillow upon which the 
white head lay was softer than any it had ever felt 
before. It was he who held the big, emaciated hand 
on that afternoon, and smiled sadly as his patient 
talked. "Ye can't save me this time," he said. 
"Ye're good ones, but there's no use in it now.'' 

It were fitting if that mother and daughter could 
have been near then, while, as the shadows length- 
ened, he said good-bye. There was no hope of 
alory, no illumined path stretching out before him 
and across the river. " Good-bye. I'm glad to go. 
I couldn't help it. I never had no luck. It's all 
right noiry 

And for the last time — lonely now, indeed, but as 
he had lived, without fear — the frontiersman started 
out upon la Jornada del muer'to. 



III. 

MEl^ OF THE BOEDER. 

NO one would ever learn from innumerable vol 
umes that our country had developed anythin^i; 
characteristic, save that which, as Americans, we are 
hound to consider as abstract greatness. Of course 
not ; America is yet too young to have developed 
classes whose peculiarities serve to separate them 
from the great nuiss of their countrymen, or to give 
them a place of their own in the annals of change 
and progress. In this supposition, if it be as com- 
mon as it would seem, there is a mistake. 

There is a life where habits, prejudices and tastes 
which have been bred in the bone are forgotten ; 
where the grooves are turned a-wry and broken, and 
in whose strongly defined yet fleeting characteristics 
are to be seen the most wonderful of all the changes 
that peculiar surroundings are capable of working 
upon personal character. 

The borderer is a man, not born, but uncon- 
sciously developed by his associations, surroundings, 
and necessities. He may have seen the light first on 
the Chesapeake or the banks of the Juniata; he may 
hail from Lincolnshire or Cork. Far Western life 
will clotlie him with a new individuality, make him 
forget the tastes and habits of early life, and trans- 
form him into one of that restless horde of cosmopo- 
lites who are the foam of that slow wave of human- 

43 



44 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

ity which creeps toward the setting snn, and subsides 
at last in tliat green and abiding peace whicli lias 
changed the wilderness into homes and farms, built 
railways and cities, and in a quarter of a century 
added one-third to the wealth of a people in compar- 
ison with whose greatness the Roman Empire was a 
mimic show. 

The life of the border is necessarily a transitory 
one, and is fast passing away. The peculiarities of 
existence and men there will disappear before fast 
advancing civilization, and leave no record of them- 
selves, even as the backwoodsman has left none. 
And yet the frontier may be said to have a lan- 
guage, a religion, and a social life of its own. It 
has a habit of thought and action unique, vigorous, 
and not wanting in the elements of that wdiich every- 
where expresses religion, honor, and pathos. The 
people whose tastes or whose fates lead them hither . 
have a world to themselves alone : a world of loneli- 
ness and lost comforts, where cities, banks, railroads, 
theatres, churches, and scandals have not yet come ; 
a world where births and weddings are few, funeral 
ceremonies are short, and tears are almost unknown. 
There is here so close an affinity between nature and 
man that nature is an hourly teacher in a land that 
is as solemn as the sea, and where, as upon the sea, 
the mists of the horizon bound the world. The days, 
unchanged by the ceremonies and observances of 
civilization, are all alike, each one as melancholy as 
a Puritan Sabbath. Nature is herself, and spreads 
her feasts and acts her orderly caprices at her own 
pleasure. Acres of flowers, leagues of beauty, bloom 



MEN OF THE BOUDEli. 45 



and fade and come again, unseen by man, wlio does 
not as yet understand his own dominion. Solitary 
birds liy silently by. The animals stare at the new 
animal— 7 the passing man — almost unscared ; and 
silence is a power. 

And yet the borderer is not a ''child of nature." 
Men never are. It is a fiction of the poets. He is, 
in his wildest state and his nearest approach to sim- 
plicity, a creature of education, but of an education 
so peculiar that the term scarcely expresses it. He 
is undoubtedly a very different character from the 
backwoodsman who has been called his prototype, 
and in all respects a much more modern one of that 
larffe class who are the unconscious victims of cir- 
cumstance. He who a generation ago was engaged 
in hewing out openings in the vast forests of Ohio 
and Indiana was clad in buckskin and moccasins, and 
practised in a homely manner, but conscientiously, 
the virtues of hospitality, uncouth bnt disinterestea 
kindness, and general and strict personal honesty. If 
he was ignorant of the graces of civilization, he also 
knew few of its vices. He had not been in cities and 
had not carried their characteristic vices with him 
into the wilderness. The weapon of his day was 
an honest rifle, and he had not an arsenal of death 
slang about his waist. In all these things the mod- 
ern frontiersnum sets at naught the idealisms of 
Cooper, the time-honored traditions of the middle 
states, and the well-established ideas of novel-read- 
ing mankind. 

The ideal borderer, the type of his class from 
eastern Kansas to the Rio Grande, you are apt to 



46 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

find in calf-skin boots, with wide-brimmed liat Avorn 
askew, and nether limbs encased in fancy cassimeres. 
There are often rings npon his fingers and blazing 
jewels npon his breast. He is inclined to be lond 
and defiant in dress, manners, and general deport- 
ment. He clings with the tenacitj^ of second nature 
to the language of the dance-house and the brothel, 
and uses in his discourse the picturesque phraseol- 
ogy of draw-poker. The unhappy thought of Colonel 
Colt, which has filled more unmarked graves than 
the plague and eternally settled more disputes than 
all juries, is his constant and valued companion, and 
he wears his rakish hat a-wry upon his oily locks 
with the air of the king of all the loafers. 

But he is not a loafer. He is quarrelsome, jeal- 
ous of honor, and still very much of a man and a 
friend to those who understand him. He scorns to 
conceal actual impressions and thoughts, but in this 
he is onl}^ very unnecessarily sincere and independ- 
ent. He will take a stranger's last dollar at a game 
wdiich he does not understand, but he will likewise 
lend and share to the last cent and the last morsel. 
ITe hates what he is pleased to consider "airs," 
cannot abide to be patronized, and is intolerant 
toward all who chance to disagree with him. His 
great fault is a disposition to bluster, to assert him- 
self, to deny to the rest of mankind the privilege of 
being ever or by any chance in the right. But he 
is brave, sincere, and faithful, when once enlisted in 
any cause. 

This kind of man, with the many variations 
which exist among classes always, is the frontiers- 



3IEN OF THE BORDEB. 47 

man. California has seen liini these twenty years. 
He is here and there in all the villages of Colo- 
rado and New Mexico, and his habitation is in 
every sheltered nook in many thousands of miles of 
plains-country. AVith all his faults, it may be justly 
said of him that he is a man who depends upon his 
courage, who has chosen his life and will never 
leave it, and who is the fit and capable vedette 
who stands upon the verge of the mighty civiliza- 
tion which is destined to follow him when he and his 
unconscious work shall have passed into that dim 
limbo that has no historian, and leaves no record, 
monument, nor representative. It is not necessa- 
rily a startling announcement, that the borderer 
does not feel called upon to live entirely without 
the solace and comfort of woman. We may be 
saddened, but hardly astonished, to know that the 
bold-faced curse of the by-streets of the most pop- 
ulous and enlightened of the cities of the world 
is also here, bolder, gaudier, and more shameless 
than ever. Ministering to every baseness, inciting 
to every crime, worse than her male associates by 
so much as woman fallen is always worse than 
man, the tipsy queen of the demi-monde flaunts 
her finery among the shanties of every border town. 
But there is another class who, in a feminine 
way, are like unto their husbands and brothers. 
They are indeed few, and it will be long before 
there will be complaints of a surplus of maiden 
ladies on the border. Plow or why an}^ of them 
ever came tliere, is something of a mystery. But 
they live in the ranche and the adobe, and are 



4:8 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

wives and mothers, and are content — and, it is 
liardly superlative to say, as liappj as their more 
elegant sisters of the East. Their nearest neighbor 
may be twenty miles away, their chances for gossip 
few and far between, and all their amusements and 
occupations masculine and homely. They know 
more of the. economy of the camp-tire, the qualities 
of oxen, and the habits of the coyote, than they do 
of the prevailing fashions, or of cunning variations 
in the style of bonnets and the color of hosiery. 
But the neat bed in the corner, tlie clean hearth, 
the neatness of dingy adobe or sod walls, and the 
trailing vine over the low roof, in many a frontier 
house, proclaim the touch, the taste, the love and 
care, with which, in loneliness, poverty, and isola- 
tion, a woman still adorns the spot whicli is her 
home. 

There are chiklren too. You need not think to 
escape the cry of infancy by going westward. Tliey 
never lieard the sound of the school-house bell, and 
are ignorant of the functions of a Sunday-school 
superintendent. Tliey are even deprived of the 
ordinary amusements of children. Tliey ride no 
gates, slide upon no cellar doors, and make no 
small escapades, to be found and carried home by 
the police. But the mud-pie proprietorship of a 
hundred leagues is theirs. All their lives they 
have heard the bark of the coyote, and watched 
tor the coming and going of the bison, and in the 
majority of instances are the tow-headed, boggle- 
eyed urchins that children of the English blood the 
world o^•er are ever apt to be. 



3IEN OF THE BORDER. 49 



Partly to circumstances attending trade, particu- 
larly freighting, but mainly to what may be called 
the migratory instinct, most of the people of the far 
frontier owe the fact of their residence there. So 
far east as western Kansas, there is yet a more 
natural motive — the desire to obtain a home and 
land. There is no more natural illustration than is 
here apparent of how the human mind goes back in 
its desires to the original source of all wealth, and 
to the first meaning of the word home — a home that 
is ours because we have made it. In the search for 
this, there is no danger that can daunt, no difficulty 
that can discourage. The pertinacity with which 
the pre-emptors and squatters have clung to the 
idea of home-getting, amid surronndings in which 
there seems so little present happiness and so little 
future hope, is not the least surprising feature of 
their hard lives. But with regard to a large class 
with which this article has mainly to do, the ques- 
tion as to why they are there, and what they find to 
do, is harder to answer. The plains ranch proper 
is always a small store, in which is sold bacon, 
flour, and a very bad article of whiskey. The. travel 
is mainly confined to certain roads, and, notwith- 
standing the trans-continental lines of railway, is at 
certain seasons of the year by no means inconsider- 
able. By this travel the rancher lives. The brown 
walls of his hovel, seen from afar, are hailed with 
delight by men who have not drunk nor smoked 
since the night at the last stopping-place. To pass 
without moistening his clay, would be to the aver- 



50 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES, 

age plaiiis-nian an act strongly indicating mental 
decay. 

But the proportion of people who manage to live 
on the border without any visible means of support 
is larger than it is anywhere else outside of the 
great cities. The hangers-on of the ranches go and 
come unquestioned. Their dark and bearded faces 
disappear, and they are gone, perhaps only lor a 
day, — though if forever, it leads to no inquiry and 
excites no alarm. It is certain that the Anglo- 
Saxon can become anything. He can be Indianized 
and Mexicanized, and upon the frontier he becomes 
an Arab — not a weak imitation or intentional pat- 
tern, but of his own kind, and after his own ftmcies 
and necessities. Taciturn, suspicious, and coura- 
geous, hospitable in peace and unscrupnlous in 
enmity, the Bedouin of tlie border is a man who 
wears clothes of a familiar pattern, and speaks 
English ; and there his resemblance to the race 
from which he sprung almost ends. 

Yet the verge of civilization is a field for the 
gathering together of all kinds and classes. Here 
is the patient, plodding, phlegmatic German, fast 
forgetting every tradition of his fatherland in the 
absorbing wildness that makes all men alike. 
Here is the Irishman, with the rich brogue of Tip- 
perary still upon his tongue, but changed in all else 
which tells of the green isle of peat, potatoes, and 
blarney. Here is the down-east Yankee, oblivious 
of all the ideas of the land of baked beans and hard 
cider, turning his native cunning to account at poke)- 
and. California jack. Here is the characteristic sou 



3Ij^N OF THE BORDER. 51 

of the Soutli, still speaking tlie luiiicing dialect that 
has been horrowed in the name of gentility from the 
thick tongue of the negro, but, for a wonder, forget- 
ting to insert "Sir" at the ending of evei-y sen 
tence. But all are changed, at least in name. The 
German has become ''Dutch Bill," or ''Dutch" 
something, no matter what ; the Irishman is always 
"Pat.'' The New Englander often answers to the 
name of " Yank," and the Southerner is willing and 
proud to be called "Ivaintuck," or "Tennessee," or 
even "Cracker." Thus is true democracy made 
manifest. The real names of individuals are often 
unknown to acquaintances of years. Any peculiarity 
of person or history brings about its apt cognomen 
of recognition. The man who squints is "Cock- 
eye" fn- all time. The lame man is "Limpy," 
and the sleiuler and attenuated one is "Slim" 
Dick, or Tom, or whatever the name that was once 
his may be. The surprising thing is that these 
names are accepted and gloried in. Indeed, tliose 
that are born of some peculiarity of ])ers()nal history 
are proudly borne. To be Buftalo Bill, or Fighting 
Joe, is to be famous. "Mister" is the designation 
of a stranger ; but if a borderer calls an individual 
"Mister"* after he has known him a week, it means 
that he does not particularly like him, to say the 
least. 

Brusque and rude as all this seems, thei-e is no 
country where the established forms are more rigidly 
observed. If you are invited to "take suthin'," it 
is oifensive to refuse. If you are asked to "set up 
and eat," it is not a mere form; you are not oidy 



52 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

really welcome, but expected t<^ return tlie compli- 
nieiit should your host ever come your way. In 
the innnense expanse of country, men who live a 
hundred miles apart are often near neighbors and 
intimate friends. The necessities of the frontier 
produce a freemasonry in comparison with which 
the actual brotherhood is a tame and meaningless 
thing. If a ranchman lends his neighbor a mule 
and tells him to leave it at Sims' s or Slocum's, a 
hundred miles away, he is certain of finding the 
animal there when wanted. Honesty and punctual- 
ity are the current exchange of the country, and a 
short shrift and a sudden endiug is the meed of 
absolute necessit}^ to him who habitually wrongs his 
neighbor. 

Another bond of union among all white men on 
the border is common enmity to the Indian. Hatred 
of the Apaclie and the Kiowa will be the uppermost 
feeling in the borderer's mind so long as there is a 
disputed territory claimed alike by him and his 
enemy. Year by yeai* the ranks are thinned in many 
an encounter that is never heard of in the world 
of newspapers, and year by year the frontiersman 
counts fresh accessions to his ranks. While right 
and justice and policy are discussed elsewhere, the 
contest proceeds without any abatement between the 
parties interested. The sentence of doom that is 
written against the red man, while it is slow in its 
operation, seems utterly irrevocable. The horde of 
adventurers who invade his huuting-grounds are 
hardy, bold, and cunning as he. Within a century 
one of the great divisions of a common family will 



MEN OF THE BORDER. 53 

lijive passed away, and its only history will be a 
liistoiy of decadence and death, preserved in the 
meagre annals of its tirst and last enemy, the bor- 
derer. 

So mnch isolation and habitual loneliness has 
been the cause of curious relationships, and of these 
the fashion of j)artnersliips is a renuirkable one. 
Two men, often very unlike, will associate them- 
selves, not so much as sharers in the gains of busi- 
ness or adventure — though that is also included — 
but simply as "pards," adopted brethren. Each 
one^s quarrel is also the quarrel of the other. They 
are always encountered together, and hold all trou- 
bles in common, togetlier with all pleasures. In 
most cases, a genuine affection seems to exist be- 
tween them. There is rather an opinion that who- 
ever has no "pard" is, until cause be shown, a 
rather "mean cuss," "wdio can't live with nobody." 
A separation of two partners, and a dissolution of 
the mysterious tie, causes as great a scandal as a 
divorce case in other regions. 

But there is yet another side to the frontiersman's 
friendship. His neighborly obligations are all out- 
side the obligations imposed by the sixth command- 
ment. The revolver is not always carried about for 
nothing, and its owner is quick of hand and eye, and 
generally sure of his weapon and his aim. There is 
no man upcm whom a reckless code of honor is so 
fatally and foolishly binding. An insult, fancied or 
real, is settled then and there with a life, and the 
bystanders are the judges of the fairness of the 
transaction. To maul and pummel is childish, and 



54 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

leads to no adequate result ; to murder is gentle- 
manly and proper, and, withal, the fashion. The 
old code of the duello was a tame and insipid thing 
compared with a row in a "saloon" in a border 
town. There is no code, no law, no jury. Each 
man, in the heat of passion, is the judge of the 
gravity of the foolish word, the drunken insult, the 
hastily-spoken taunt, or the ancient grudge, and 
therefore gi\x^s his own life or takes another for it, 
as depends upon his soberness, his quickness, or his 
courage. We talk of the fashions which rule society, 
where there is society; of hoops, panniers, chignons, 
and bustles, with all their accompanying bonnets 
and trains. On the border, men willingly die to be 
in the fashioii. 

Human nature becomes accustomed to all sur- 
roundings that are forced upon it, and to solitude 
easiest of all. The frontiersnum would smile if you 
told him that his life w^as 'a monotonous one. Want- 
ing even the newspaper, he is more gregarious than 
other men are, and makes a companion of some- 
thing, and even an animal is made to serve in that 
capacity when there is no one else. The dog, dear 
as he is to many men everywhere, is doubly a friend 
in the wilderness. His master sleeps and eats and 
talks with him. He may be the mangiest cur that 
ever barked. JN'o matter ; it is not a country in 
which to be too particular. There is another animal 
that commonly leads a persecuted life and dies a 
violent death among Christian people, that here 
fmds a better h^t and more appreciation. Our friend 
will search long and far for a surplus and unneces- 



MEN OF THE EOUDER. 55 



sary cat, and name him comically, and teach him 
innumei-able tricks, and make him altogether an 
important member of his household. Sometimes, in 
the Southwest, a long-eared and solemn-counte- 
nanced little ass will be found making himself very 
much at home upon the premises, clumping clumsily 
about the shanty, inyestigating the cookery, climb- 
ing upon the bed, and going in and out with an 
irresistibly comic air of pro])rietorship. But the 
opportunity for companionship with his own kind 
never passes unused with the hermit of the wilder- 
ness. There are nightly gatherings at every ranch, 
and the resource for amusement is usually the pas- 
time that is as old as Babel : that of story-telling. 
Each man has something to say, mostly upon the 
interesting subject of his own adventures and past 
life, and palms his narratives oft' for very truth, and, 
as every listener knows, usually makes them as he 
goes, out of whole cloth. Some of the most out- 
rageous travesties upon truth ever said or sung have 
beguiled the dull hours in the frontier cabin. The 
next resource is the card-table, and in mining dis- 
tricts the sums that sometimes change hands would 
startle the visitors at Saratoga. With most frontiers- 
men gambling is a passion, and some of them are 
most accomplished members of the card-dealing 
fraternity. 

It should not be imagined that this man is impa- 
tiently waiting the coming of a higher civilization, 
or that he even wishes it to come. It suits him as it 
is, and when the change comes he will go. It is 
better not to need a thing than to have it. The 



56 FROXTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

imknown life of every man is more or less a protest 
against law, refinement, obedience, and tlie odious 
"duty.'' Habit has accustomed these men to free- 
dom from the restraints of civilization ; from a bond- 
age that all men sometimes feel, and which these, at 
least, will never renew. They have discovered that 
the refinements of life may be purchased at too high 
a price. For them the veneer and the varnish have 
cracked, and the original man shows through, the 
savage that each one of us really is. In these, the 
unconquerable impulses of eternal nature have found 
permanent expression. They are those who will 
tolerate never again the monotony of society. They 
have abandoned forever the daily paper, polished 
boots, books, insincere conversation, politics, in- 
trigue, and the treadmill endlessness of that routine 
which we call domestic life. 

Our frontiersman has his excitements and his 
pleasures, ferocious and deep, and for which he 
refuses to be called to account by society or any 
earthly authority. The man who shall transfer to 
canvas some one of the scenes which each midnight 
brings to the inner room of the trader's store in a 
]^ew Mexican mining cam.p, and shall do it well, 
will preserve for all time the most striking feature 
of American frontier life. We shall see the dead 
silence and the rapt attention, as the guttering can- 
dles or smoking lamps flare upon each sun-browned 
and grizzled face ; the hard hands and hairy arms ; 
the look of covert exultation, as the winner draws 
toward him the coin and the bags of yellow dust. 
We shall read the quick glance that susj)ects a cheat, 



3IEN OF THE BOBDER. 57 



and tlie deep curse that records a mistake. And 
standing there, ahnost as intent as the phijers, will 
be those who watch the fascinating passion in its 
varying record of gain or loss. The dim light will 
throw the rough beams along the roof into shadows 
and lights with grotesque alternations, and blackness 
will lurk among the lounging figures in nooks and 
corners. But pervading all — the essence of the 
picture — w^ill bo that suggestion of ftdly and ruin 
which mere words cannot paint : that look npon 
fiices that tells of the homelessness of years, the 
days of toil and sacrifice, the months of delving and 
hoping, all gone in a single night ; and also of that 
bewitching hope that ever waits npon the devotees 
of the god of chance, and the end of which is 
despair, broken hearts, and death. 



lY 

BROWN'S REVENGE. 

OJO C)x\LIENTE was of itself a prominent fea- 
ture in a landscape bare and brown, and 
stretching in rocky monotony and silence for leagues 
on every hand. Even to those wise ones who lind 
among the " ologies " a sufficient explanation for all 
the strange thi:>gs this old world did when she was 
very young and soft, the decided eccentricities of 
nature are always invested with something of the 
terror of mystery and the charm of strangeness. As 
for this particular spot, many thoughtful eyes had 
looked upon it ; many wise heads had speculated at 
its brink. A conical mound, very symmetrical in 
shape, and some thirty feet in height, rose from the 
surrounding plain. Its top was a circular basin, 
about fifteen feet in diameter and of unknown depth, 
always full of limpid, sparkling, bubbling water. 
There alone in all the thirsty land the delicious ele- 
ment abounded, rejoiced, and i-an over. Clear, pure, 
and — cold, of course? No, it was scalding hot. 
There was the wonder. It was one of the myste- 
rious openings into our common mother's fervid 
heart. Through a notch in the rocky basin's edge 
the stream ran over, as large as a man's body, — a 
volume that might have supplied a town with hot 
baths, and almost have cleansed the grimy denizens 
of Constantinople itself. But it did not seethe and 

58 



BIWW^^'S' BEVENGE. 59 



rage, <'ind then compose itself in intervals of fitful 
and dece])tive slumber. Through all seasons and 
all times, through heat and cold, the stream was as 
constant as woman's love, or wickedness. Where 
the torrent spread itself out and cooled in tlie plain 
below, the tall grass and coarse weeds, and some 
hardy ferns, grew rank and luxuriant, with their 
roots constantly ^bathed in a frost-defying warmth. 
And the terrapins and wart-grown lizards and long- 
legged mottled toads gathered there and lived a 
fortunate life. Amid the dense growth and balmy 
vapors the rattlesnake forgot to stiffen his odious 
coils in a half-year's slumber, and lay content and 
stupid, but still venomous, all the season througli. 
The rough bowlders gathered a green coat of slimy 
moss as they lay in the ooze; and in winter, when 
the hoar-frost or the light snow lay on all the hills, 
that bit of verdure was like a flowery acre strayed 
from the tro})ics. 

Such a place, lying as it did on the main road 
from the low country to the hills, had not failed to 
attract attention and suggest a use. And that use 
was, of course, in accord with the ideas of the coun- 
try. Ojo Galiente was a ranch ; and while to a cer- 
tainty the ranch idea could not be left out, there was 
also connected w^itli it a new idea in the wilderness : 
it was a watering-place. The scalding flood was 
supposed to possess medicinal properties, and an 
enterprising man occupied the slope of the hill with 
a rambling adobe, the front of which, standing next 
the travelled road, was the ''store," while an array 
of rude chambers straggled up the slope toward the 



60 FB.ONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

spring. Each rouiii was fiirnislied with a k:)ng 
wooden tub, into wliicli the water was conducted by 
a trough. Some tall cottonwoods flourished beside 
tlie wall, and, gaining vigorous growth from the 
warm stream that touched their roots, gave an oasis 
charm to this one spot in the treeless landscape. 

The place was likewise a hotel, and the smoke of 
some camp-fire arose each night from the trampled 
and dustj spot beside the garden, and mules braved 
within the square enclosure which was supposed to 
be a sufficient protection against the Apache. Here 
and there a limping rheumatic sat and chafed his 
limbs, and talked of his complaint, and waited for 
health. Other than the waters, there was no pbysi- 
cian there. IS^either w^as there any pretence of infirm- 
it}' as an excuse for idleness and pleasure. There 
was no need of pretended illness in this region as an 
excuse for dissipation. 

The proprietor of the place — the inventor and 
maker of all save the scalding spring itself — was a 
man whom every denizen of the country knew, and 
none knew well. He had come from no one knew 
or ever found out where, and had improved his pos- 
sessions with a lavish hand and no small expenditure 
of money. He was called wealthy, and daily added 
to his store. His cattle grazed upon the surround- 
ing hills, and w4th rare skill and vigilance he kept 
them safe from the universal enemy. His place 
was known as a good place, and his meals were 
"square'' meals. As neighbors go in that country, 
he was a good neighbor ; and many a mule was lent, 
many a broken wheel mended, and many a meal 



JUiOWN'S IlEVENGE. 61 



given away, for men whom he liad never seen 
before. Personally, he had failed to take npon him 
the likeness of the border. Middle-aged and grave, 
he dressed in a civilized garb, and his oddly-shaven 
face had in it a look of settled melancholy. By a 
stranger, all these things were seen and forgotten. 
"Odd feller," the}' said, as they passed on ; "won- 
der where he come from { " and that was all. 

Bnt those who had known him longer had stud- 
ied these peculiarities to better purpose. There 
was a rumor in the country that his name was not 
really Denham, and in many a camp-fire talk it had 
been remarked that no man had ever heard him 
mention the place of his nativity or speak of his 
family. Yet the unconquerable dialect of his youth 
betrayed him as an Englishman ; and this was the 
only circumstance they could absolutely claim as 
knowledge. Yet he was never questioned ; for, 
liking him well, there was still something about 
him that forbade familiarity. 

He was proverbially quiet, and even timid. He 
carried not the accustomed arsenal upon his belt, 
and was never known to take \\\) a gun. In these 
things his servants acted for him ; and while he had 
been known to stand calmly at his door and watch 
an Indian running-fight for the possession of his 
herds, the idea of actual participation in the 
defence seemed never to have entered his mind. 
So they sometimes called him "the preacher,'' and 
the irreverent nicknamed him "padre ;" and when 
by chance he heard them, lie turned and walked 



62 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



away witli a peculiar and unwonted look upon his 
melancholy face. 

Once when a miner died at his house, and was 
filled with that late repentance that usually comes 
to torment the closing hours of a hard life, Den- 
ham stood with others in the room. They told 
afterward how '' the preacher " seemed to restrain 
himself in the desire to say or do sometliing at the 
dying sinner's bedside. He came, hesitated, went 
away again. He again returned, bringing with him 
a small worn volume, which he opened and tried to 
read. His lips were dry and his face grew pale, as 
he read: ''I am the resurrection and the life; he 
that believetli in me — . " His voice choked in the 
utterance of the words that take in all there is of 
ho])e; and he closed tlie book and left the place. 
There were those who were ready thereafter to 
declare, in their rough fashion, that if he Avere not 
a ]n'eaclier he ought to be. 

Frontiersmen are not inclined to love men who 
are not of their kind. But in this case, after four 
vears of divided opinion, the larger portion of that 
scattered population who had aught to do witli the 
proprietor of Ojo Caliente were ready to tight for 
him. ]Ie did not swear, he refused to drink, he 
avoided slang. His language was such as some few 
of them could hardly understand ; and with every 
temptation that the reckless and devil-may-care 
spirit of the country offered, there was no suspi- 
cion of a single slip in his conduct. He counselled 
l^eace in the midst of strife. He gave advice to 
those who asked it, but meddled with the affairs of 



JJliOWK\^ UEVENGE. 63 



none. Each man believed himself to be his chief 
friend. He was accounted acute and far-sighted, 
and a crowd of nieu, ever ready to act more from 
impulse than reason, made discovery of that fact. 
He was the depository of the confidence of every 
bearded fellow in a radius of a hundred miles, and 
he kept the secrets like a priest. But none could 
divest him of his strang'eness. lie read books — 
or, rather, a book. For a long time they thought 
it must be one some of them had heard of, mayhap 
seen : the Bible. But when one of their number 
once slyly looked at the open page, 'he discovered 
that other scarcely less wonderful volume, Shak- 
speare. Once, on a frosty night, he read to the 
story-tellers around the iire a tale that had in it 
rather more of that wonderful ''touch of luiture " 
than they were accustomed to in theirs, and they 
clamored for more, and listened until the moon 
v/ent down. And each rough son of the wilder- 
ness carried ever after a bright imagining of her 
who would have b(n*ne the logs for Ferdinand, and 
fimcied he could sometimes hear Ariel sing among 
the pines. 

Men who lead a strange life are generally uncon- 
scious of that life's strong peculiarities. Had his 
friends been critical, they would have (piestioned the 
motives of a man wlio, while so unlike them, yet 
chose to live among tliem. With all his kindness he 
was still a man apart. You could tell, as he sat with 
thoughtful face at his door in the shimmering sum- 
mer afternoon, that his heart was not in this country. 
He started at the slightest sound. He scrutinized 



64 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

strange faces with a kind of covert interest, and 
seemed ever ready to fly, abandoning all. The long- 
looked-for mail that brought letters — evidently pre- 
cious things even to the coarse and apparently hard- 
ened men around him — brought nothing to him. If 
0]o Caliente and its lonesome hxndscape was not his 
home, then where couhi it be, since he had no inter- 
est in any other ? 

It is well known that the lonely graves of the 
border sometimes hide strange histories — strange 
and untold. The boundless waste of plain and 
mountain is the great refuge of those who would 
hide from themselves. It is not the man doomed 
to spend the days of his years between granite walls, 
not he who sees his last goods go down under the 
sherifl''s hammer, not even he to whom law is inter- 
preted as the grim code which puts a halter upon 
his neck and his coffin before him, who knows uiost 
of remorse, most of fear, or most of despair. Of all 
suffering men, he suffers most who, burdened with 
unpunished crimes, hides from the world. There is 
a punishment that comes at midnight, that no man 
may avoid. This is hell. There is need of none 
more fiery. You think faces will tell the tale; but 
there is no such incomparable liar as the human 
countenance. The man who scowls and frowns at 
the fit of his collar or the quality of his dinner may 
live long and carry a gnawing devil in his heart, and 
give no sign. 

Thus Denham ate and slept well, and looked 
,after his affairs, and had only a melancholy face. 
But he was ever watching. As he sat at his door, 



BROWN'S REVENGE. 65 

and the evening shadows crept downward from the 
mountain-toj^s, he could see the dim specks upon the 
brown road grow larger and larger, and thej were 
never out of his sight or thoughts until nearness 
demonstrated their character and showed him their 
faces. This watchfulness was the man's characteris- 
tic ; a sign of long-past trouble or crime, whatever that 
trouble or crime was. Kot that his friends thought 
so. Uneasy watchfulness might have a thousand 
causes, and is oftenest not regarded at all. Once 
convict, once even suspect, and all signs are easily 
read and exaggerated by tho^e whose function it is to 
suspect expertly. And yet there is ever more than 
natural oddity in the man who walks with bent head 
and locked hands, and upon whose ordinary occupa- 
tion creeps ever in the absent action, the muttered 
word, the startled look, and the sudden change of 
countenance. The man Denham had these charac- 
teristics. "I reckon he's the feardest of Injins of 
any man in these parts," his neighbors sometimes 
remarked. He was afraid, but not of Indians. There 
was but one man of whom Denham stood in mortal 
fear, and he knew not if that one terrible creature 
were alive or dead. 

And in the long and tedious hours that wait upon 
an order of events that men may never control lest 
they should interrupt retribution, it occurred that 
Denham' s ghost came at last and sat himself down 
like Banquo at the feast. Even his far home in the 
wilderness was doomed to be the lure of fate and the 
cause of his discomfiture. For with grim pertinacity 
men's crimes, even their mistakes, do often hunt 
5 



6Q. FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

tliem out. One evening, business, or a not uncom- 
mon desire to be alone, took him over the hill and 
far down by the sedgy garden. It may have been 
that his brooding mind had that anticipation of evil 
which we imagine our inner consciousness sometimes 
has. But in an hour he returned slowly toward 
the house, his hands behind him, and his bent and 
prematurely gray head regarding only his own slow 
footsteps. Entering at the rear, lie passed slowly 
through the low rooms, pushing aside the canvas 
that hung as a door before the entrance to each 
apartment. The frost of the late autumn of a pros- 
perous year had come, and upon rude benches a half 
dozen frontiersmen sat before the blazing fire in the 
public room, engaged in the old business of storj^- 
telling. He approached the strip of soiled canvas 
which hung between him and them, slowly, as was 
his wont ; and as he came a voice, that was not a 
familiar one fell upon his ear. It was not familiar, 
for the man was a stranger; and jQi that coarse and 
strident laugh was like a knell to George Denham, 
and his face flushed and paled as he sank upon a 
seat. Then, as he cautiously peered through upon 
the group, he saw the stranger, lately arrived, full 
of talk, and the only man whose coming had ever 
escaped those watchful eyes. He was not a creature 
to be frightened at, only a bearded fellow of forty, 
red-faced and brawny-handed, — as evidently a man 
whose best years had been spent upon the border 
as though the fact had been placarded upon him. 
Already he was on familiar terms with the men 
around him, and had begun the narration of his 



BROWN'S REVENGE. 67 

adventures. As Denhani waited and listened behind 
the curtain for confirmation of his fears, he knew the 
stranger did not lie as he talked. 

"Gentlemen," said he, "I never were here 
before, but Fm usen to this kind o' thing. I kim to 
Californy when I were kind o' young, about '50, 
an' kinder struck a lead, an' made money mity fast. 
I stayed 'round thar fur twelve year, — yes, I reckon 
it wus twelve year, — -an' all the time, gentlemen, I 
had a woman back in Injiany whar I come frum. 1 
don't know how's this might strike some o' you ; 
but I had, an' it were a long time to wait, you bet 
ye. An' so finally I concluded I'd go back an' see 
my old gal, awaitin' so long, ye know. Well (any 
gent as has a chaw o' terbacker kin acconmiodate 
me), as I was a saj-in' (thank ye, boss), I started 
fur to go back agin, an' when I got down to Saccer- 
mento, thinks I, what ud I be doin' to be a carryin' 
around about ten thousan' dollars an' suthin' more ? 
' Buy a draft,' sez they. 'A draft?' sez I ; 'we ain't 
usen to ho sicli in my part o' the country.' But the 
war wuz broke out, ye know, an' I see some mity 
purty bills — they called 'em treas'ry notes — as 
they said wuz as good's the old gold. Sez I, ' Mis- 
ter, them'll do,' an' I chucked my dust inter ten o' 
the biggest. 'Twar a mighty small roll, I tell ye, 
for to be w^uth ten thousan', an' I jest folded 'em into 
a slip o' paper an' chucked 'em into my jacket pocket, 
an' started. It war careless, I know, but I 'lowed I 
needn't tell of 'em bein' thar. Well, I come clear 
across, an' war a'most home, 'till I got on a road in 
the state of Missoury. We wuz a lioopin' it up one 



QS FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

night, scootiii' over tlie perary at about forty mile a 
hour, an' I went to sleep. In the mornin', gentle- 
men, when I felt fur my money, it war gone. It's 
been long ago now, an' all past an' done ; but I tell 
you it mighty nigh got me. I wuz a thinkin' of the 
old gal — dreamin' of her, in fact, — an' to wake in 
the mornin' a sittin' in a seat a rattlin' towards home 
arter twelve year o' hard work, an' busted — teetotal 
busted, — it war too bad. Gentlemen, I ain't much 
on the weakness, but I could a' cried. I tackled the 
conductor. Sez lie, 'There ain't no man got off this 
'ere train sence two o'clock, an' you got on at one.' 
Then he ask 'em, sez he, ' Will any man objec' to 
bein' sarched ? ' An' they sez no. Ther wuz no 
crack or chink o' that car we didn't sarch. Ther 
wuz no wimmin on, an' hadn't been, an' no man cud 
naterally objec'. Finally, sez the conductor, sez he, 
'You ain't never had it.' I jest knocked him inter 
a cocked hat. I wuz riled, an' it wuz a comfort for 
to do it. An' then I jest dim' down oiPn that train 
an' started back. I hain't seen my old woman — 
shan't never see her— she's dead. Gentlemen, I'm 
a busted man. I don't claim to be nuthin' else. 
. . . . Kin vou accommodate me, pard ? — thank 
ye." 

As the speaker, with indescribable gusto, placed 
another quid in his mouth, there was a perceptible 
feeling around the circle of listeners. It is mistaken 
philosophy, and mistaken religion, to speak of the 
hardness of the human heart. It is careless and 
selfish, but there is no more responsive thing when 
awakened bv that unstudied strain which is like the 



BROWN'S REVENGE. 69 



harmony we n;ay liear when the chords of a harp 
are touched by a baby's fingers or by a passing 
robe. It was not intended, and a thousand attempts 
might not reproduce it. It was music, nevertheless. 

" But," said one, who was younger than the rest, 
'^ why did you not go home ? What did ye act that- 
a-way for ? ' ' 

Then the stranger turned his head slightly to one 
side, and closed his opposite eye, and regarded the 
speaker for a brief moment. It was the pantomime 
which means, "What ails you F -'' 

"Air ye aware, young feller, that a man can't go 
home arter twelve year, poor an' ragged aiT ornery, 
an' tell 'em he had a lot o' money stole from him 
night afore last '\ Do ye think a man's mother-in- 
law 'd b'lieve any sich thin stuff?" Then, as the 
younger one retired into the shade of contempt, the 
speaker turned again toward the circle of silent lis- 
teners, and continued: "Ye see, under sich circum- 
stances, a feller keej)s his ragged britches on a 
purpose. He thinks he's a goin' for to hug his wife, 
an' kiss his babies, an' be independenter'n a mule, 
an' play it low down on 'em all fur about a week, 
an' then tell 'cm all about it, so's to \stonish 'em, 
and finally buy a ftirm. A feller kind o' wants to 
make it as creamy as possible, ye know. An' then 
to be tee total busted. Them's hard lines, gentle- 
men ; I say them's hard lines." 

And all this time Denham sat unseen behind the 
narrow curtain, and watched and listened. It was 
dark there, and only one lance of yellow light from 
the bright fire lay across his face. At first his coun- 



TO FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

tenance had a look of consternation, as lie glanced 
at his new guest, and felt his pockets, and looked 
into a far dark corner where lay an expressman's 
portable safe, probably purchased at some quarter- 
master's auction sale. Then, as the conversation 
went on, his look changed, his mood melted, and 
the dim sliadow of a strong resolve came into Jiis 
eyes. But no one can describe the emotional pan- 
orama a man's face is supposed to present under 
such circumstances ; because, if these changes occur 
at all, it is only when the restraint of other eyes is 
taken away. I have already said, with the man 
Denham as an example, that men's faces are great 
liars. But a change came over him as he listened, 
whether perceptible or not. He arose quietly and 
went to the safe that lay in the corner. He 
took a key from his pocket, and vqvj silently and 
cautiously took from the safe a j^acket, seemingly 
a folded written document of some length. Then 
he w^ent quietly back, and seated himself again, 
listening intently to the stranger's story. 

They were hard lines, he had said ; and almost 
as he uttered the words, Denham came among the 
group. He did not sit down, but where the light 
fell full upon his face, stood regarding the stranger. 

" Do you know me ? " said he. 

"Wy — well, no — not adzactly. How'd do?" 
and the good fellow rose and proffered his liand 
with a look of inquiry and anticipation. 

Denham feigned not to see the hand, which it 
seemed he dare not take ; and when the stranger 
had seated himself again he stood looking at the 



BROWN'S BEVENGE. Yl 



fire in forced calmness, but his eyes were anxious, 
and liis voice was hoarse. Presently, as by a 
mighty effort, he said : 

"Friends, I have something to say to this man, 
WiUiam Brown," — the stranger started, — ''and to 
you all Please listen to me, and understand that 
I do appoint you all to be my judges and my jury. 
Some of you tried and hanged the horse-thief at 
Pinos Altos, and two of you captured and brought 
back the man who killed Tom Hicks, and he was 
tried and condemned. I am ready to stand by your 
verdict. God knows, I want no better men.'' 

The bronzed and bearded group upon wdiom the 
firelight glanced as this man seemed to place his 
life in their hands, sat silent. It may not have 
seemed as strange to them as it does to the reader. 
They were the law-makers, as well as the execu- 
tives, of the country in which they lived ; good men 
and true. No cringing prayers, no promises, no 
tears, availed with them. Yet the American history 
which is yet to be written will not deny justice to 
the grim law-makers of the border. Every man's 
life was in his brother's hands. They dealt justly, 
not as under the abstract obligations of an oath, 
but as every man himself hoped for justice. 

Perhaps they did not quite understand the speak- 
er's words ; but they sat unmoved, and waited. It 
was not a hasty court, — they would see it all clearly 
by and by. The speaker continued : 

"William Brown, I have heard your story, and 
I declare to these men that it is true. See here,'' 
and he held up in his hand a small square volume ; 



72 FRONTIER -AmiY SKETCHES. 

"this is a Bible. I believe this book to be God's 
book, and on it I solemnly swear that / avi the 
man that rohhed William Broicny 

A look passed from one to the other round the 
circle, but no man spoke. Only the stranger rose 
U23. Some who read this may imagine the ease 
with which a man comes at last to handle a long- 
accustomed tool. The soldier and his musket are 
almost one, and there is a flash-like celerity with 
which the Lascar slips his crooked knife from its 
greasy scabbard into tlie bowels of his antagonist. 
Such as this is the intimacy of the borderer with 
his weapon. Ere Denham could speak again, or 
scarcely look round, the slender muzzle of Brown's 
pistol was in his face. 

But there were other eyes and hands equally 
quick, and as the avenger hesitated a moment to 
say something, old Joe Maxwell's hand was upon 
his arm. "Sit down, stranger," he said; "we're 
a tryin' this case, an' don't want no interferin','' 
and his gray eye had a look which meant more than 
his words. 

Borne up by the sense of his lofty purpose, Den- 
ham stood calm, and in the silence which ensued 
took from his pocket the packet, which he unfolded, 
and handed it to old Maxwell. 

" Can you read it ? " said he. 

Tlie old frontiersman looked doubtfully at it, 
handed it back, and remarked, "Bead it yerself, an' 
I reckon we'll git the sense on it." 

"Gentlemen,"' said Denham, "this is my will 
and my story together. I wrote it more than a year 



BROWN'S RE'VENGK. 73 

ago, for a man may die, and tliougli I never thought 
to divulge its contents during mv life, yet the time 
is come when it is best that it should be known. I 
can remedy my offence, die happier, and be tliought 
better of when I am dead. As between tiiis man 
and me, I have suffered most, and justly. I could 
tell my story, but it is already written here." 

His auditors were probably not conscious of it, 
but as he stood -there, close by the guttering candle, 
with a peculiar and glorifying light upon his fjxce, he 
greatly impressed them. His manner was that of a 
man who has overcome — who has c(mquered himself. 
He opened the paper and solemnly read what is here 
set down : 

''In the Name of God, Amex. I, James Dodd, 
clergyman of the Cliurch of England, of Witham, in 
the county of Essex, and now of the United States 
of America, do herein write my last Will and Tes- 
tament, and do hereby enjoin upon all that it shall be 
duly executed, though wanting legal form, and with- 
out witnesses, for I would that I might die without 
shame, and that none should read until I am dead. 

"I give unto William Brown, once of the state 
of Indiana and now of parts unknown, and unto his 
heirs and assigns, my property of Ojo Caliente, and 
all lands, houses, appurtenances, and fixtures thereto 
belonging. And I give unto him my strong-box and 
all therein, namely, twenty-three thousand dollars in 
coin and dust. I give unto him and them all my 
cattle and goods, and all property of all kinds, to 
have, hold, and use the same forever. 



74 FRONTIEB ABMY SKETCHES. 

'"And I hereby eiij<^in upon all to whom this shall 
come when I am dead, that thev by no means hinder 
the injunctions oi this my Testament; for I do most 
solemnly declare that what I giye to the said Will- 
iam Brown is already liis, and to the doubting I 
commend the following, my confession: 

'* I am lifty-fonr years of age. I was born in the 
county of Essex, in England, and came to America 
in the year 1S48. I was a clergyman, and all my 
life, until the time whereof I speak, I luiye feared 
God, and, praying always, walked in II is law. If 
they yet liye, I haye a wife and two daughters, 
whereof the eldest must now be twenty years old. 
More of them I will not speak, for since my fall they 
haye not seen my face, and I would that they and I 
slnnild sufier all nninner of apprehension and sen-row, 
and that they should mourn me as dead, rather than 
kn<ny of my sin and crime. 

''I was poor: and though I urge not that as any 
excuse, God knows the longing of a nmn for his fam- 
ily's sake. I thonghr c^ften of how T should improye 
my condition, and dreamed of wealth. Yet I could 
not attain it. I dare not abandon a calling for which 
God and not my Hock knew how little I was fitted, 
for it secured at least my bread. Thinking these 
thoughts, I was on a railway train in the state of 
Missouri, on the night of December :?2, 180:2. On 
the car were only eleyen persons — males ; f(n- it was 
a bitter night. I arose and stood near the stoye, 
where a lamp burned dimly aboye my head. And 
as I stood there, there came a man, and standing 
beneath the liglit, and seemincrly careless of my 



BIiOWN\':^ REVENGE. 75 

presence, he took from the pocket of his vest a small 
Hat package, folded m a slip of yellow paper, upon 
which was a name. He unfolded the package, and 
as I looked he counted certain notes, called, as I 
knew, treasury notes. I perceived that there were 
ten of them, and that each was of the denomination 
of one thousand dollars. 

"I went again to my seat, and the man to his. 
But I pondered what I had seen. In my heart I 
thought that God had not been just to me. The 
man I saw was a rough and uneducated man, and 
he, I thought, will spend all this in the pleasures of 
his kind, while I, knowing so much more of the good 
that money may be made to do, am deprived of all. 

''And I thought further. IIow, said I, might a 
man obtain this money and go happy and un])nn- 
ished ? I knew that mere criminals were fools, easily 
detected, and betraying guilt tliat any skill would 
enable them to hide; but I thought I could do better 
than a common thief. AVliere should I hide it, that 
I might calmly defy search? I arose and went near 
the man, and I saw that one small corner of the 
package was above his pocket. My face burned ; I 
could feel the blood rushing through my veins. So 
near it seemed, so easy. I went ag^in and looked 
into ni}^ small and poorly-furnished travelling-bag. 
There was no hiding-place there, for men look keenly 
into linings and corners wherever they may be, and 
there is where mere thieves make mistakes. But I 
unconsciously took into my hand the commonest 
article in life: a pi^ce of soap — only a small square, 
new and unused. I carried this w4th me to the plat- 



76 FRONTIEB. ARMY SKETCHES. 

form, a place where I remember the wind howled 
and the line snow drifted and cut my face. I cut 
from tlie end a small mortise and carefully saved the 
piece. Then I hollowed out tlie interior, not too 
much, and threw^ away the crumbs. I remember the 
simple and childish piece of work as vividly as 
though with the same knife I had cut a throat. I 
again approached the sleeping man, snoring heavily 
upright in his seat. I looked about me ; there was 
not a wakeful person in the car. As I gently drew 
from his pocket the packet, and knew that I held ten 
thousand dollars in my hand, my hair seemed to rise 
upon my head, and all my life, with everything good 
in it, went backward. But it seemed too late to 
retreat. It was done, and I sealed the money in the 
soap-cake, bruised the end that had been cut, as 
though by falling, and placed the whole in my bag. 

" Yery soon, it seemed to me, the man awoke 
and called out that he had been robbed. The doors 
were locked, the train stopped, and every one 
offered himself for search. Every nook was inves- 
tigated. I oifered myself and all my belongings 
with avidity, for having yielded to crime, I became 
hardened. The cake of soap fell upon the floor; a 
man picked it= up, smelled of it, and finally it was 
tossed upon a seat and lay there for many minutes. 

"Finally it became apparent that the money 
could not be found, and there was a general impres- 
sion tliat the man had lost none. But when he was 
told as much, the speaker was stricken a blow that 
might almost have killed him, and the cruelly 



BEOWN'S BEVENOE. 77 

wronged man left the train and went away, raving 
and cursing, into the bitter night. 

"'But as the train sped on its way, there was one 
even more wretched than he. I was afraid of my 
shadow. I dared not return to my innocent wife 
and prattling children, and attempt to account for 
my wealtli. Since then, I have not seen them, — 
no, nor any creature who could remind me of the 
days of my innocence and happiness. I have been 
punished, for I would give my life to see those 
toward whom I may never again turn." 

The reader ceased, and turning from his manu- 
script, said: "And now may God, through Christ, 
forgive all my sins, and restore this man his own, 
and let me die.'' 

There was a deep silence. The stranger liad 
clianged from red to pale, and sat gazing at tlie fire, 
his fingers twitching nervously, and an indescribable 
look in his eyes. Perhaps years had quenched the 
bitterness of his wrong; and as lie heard the story 
of the man who had suffered more than he, he 
seemed to forget vengeance. Finally, old Maxwell 
rose, hitched up his waist-band, and desired to hear 
the opinion of his compeers, adding, "It are bad, 

an' sneakin, an' a d d low-down game all 

through; but 'tain't no killin' 'fence, in my opin- 
ion." But when he sat down, there was no 
response. The groups sat silent, looking into the 
dying fire, their heads bent, and each man evidently 
thinking more of the strangeness of the story than 
of his function as juryman. Finally the stranger 



78 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

arose slowly, buttoned his ragged coat, looked 
around upon the group, and advanced slowly tow^ard 
Denhani. 

''Parson,'' said he, "I told ye all I wuz busted. 
I ain't got no luck. My gal's dead years ago, an' 
my friends is forsook nie. It's been so long sence I 
had a raise I don't know how secli a thing 'ud feel. 
You done it, — done it sneakin'ly on a sleepin' man. 
I don't want nothin' now, — I don't want yer bilin' 
spring, nor yer orspital, nor yer money, notuth- 
standin' it's more than' I ever had. Ye kin burn^* 
yer wdll, — ye kin keep yer curse; an' I'd even 
scorn to kill ye. Let me tell you sutliin that, with 
all yer smartness, ye ain't learned yit. Ye can't 
blarst a man's life, an' cure it all by givin' back. I 
hain't no children, no wife, no home, no cliaracter, 
no nutliin'; an' ye can't give them things to me. I 
tell ye I'm busted, an' you done it. I want none of 
yer trumpery ; keep it, — an' be damned eternally 
to ye! " 

And hurling this frightful anathema behind him, 
he strode throngh the open door and out into the 
night, and his footsteps died away upon the road. 

One by one the men arose, and silently, with no 
glance aside, went away, leaving James Dodd, cler- 
gyman and thief, alone in his stolen house and with 
]iis stolen wealth. They spent no time in parleying ; 
they passed no sentence, and it may be that they 
even pitied him; but at least he was forsaken and 
desjjised in the midst of disgrace and crime. 

vSome passing traveller found him tliere ; for 
when the frosty sunlight streamed through the 



BROWN'S REVENGE. 79 

diistj panes in the early morning, the face it shone 
upon was a dead man's waxen mask. The suicide 
had ended all with one ghastly gash from ear to ear. 
It was long ago. The spring ninrmurs on, and 
the tall cottonwoods grow green and beautiful in 
the desert. Mature and truth alone are triumphant. 
With all the characters of its little tragedy dead and 
forgotten, Ojo Caliente is still a green oasis in the 
brown landscape, in no way more remarkable for 
having been the scene of Brown's Revenge. 



y. 

OOPPEE DISTILLED. 

THE most extraordinary of all the efforts of 
American romance are tliose which, without 
any foundation in truth, have created the widely- 
accepted picture of the American Indian. When 
confronted with the actual hero, the beautiful char- 
acters of Cooper cease to attract, and, indeed, 
become in a sense ridiculous. Lordly, reticent, 
content, eloquent, brave, faithful, magnanimous, 
and truthful, he made tliose sons of the forest 
seem, whose scattered descendants now linger upon 
coveted reservations, and, in unhappy squalor, seem 
patiently, if not lazily, to await final oblivion. 
Filthy, brutal, cunning, and very treacherous and 
thievish, are their descendants and relatives who 
still wander in a condition of marauding indepen- 
dence west of us. Every tradition repeating the 
story of Indian bravery, generosity, and hospitality, 
fades like mist before the actual man. The quality 
of moral degradation, inborn and unmitigated, runs 
through the whole kindred, from King Philip and 
Red Jacket down to Sa-tan-te, Sitting Bull, Kicking 
Bird, and Spotted Tail. The common instincts of 
savagery, as illustrated in all the tribes and kin- 
dreds of the world, are intensified in these. Brave 
only in superior numbers or in ambush, honest only 
in being a consummate hypocrite, merry only at the 

80 



COPPER DISTILLED. 81 

sight of suffering inflicted by his own hand, friendly 
only through cunning, and hospitable never, and, 
above all, sublimely mendacious and a liar always, 
the Indian, as he really is to those who unfortunately 
know him, seems jDoor material out of which to 
manufacture a hero or frame a romance. All mis- 
sionary and philanthropic efforts made in his behalf 
have thus far failed to amend his life or change his 
morals. Always prominent in the history of the 
country, ever to the fore in philanthropic literature 
and high-plane oratory, always the impediment to 
be removed, and afterward the dependant to be sup- 
ported, mollified by semi-annual gifts, and oiled and 
pacified by periodical talks about the Great Father 
and blarney about "brothers," through campaigns, 
councils, treaties, and tribal relations, he has finally 
come to almost the last years of his career, with 
(mly the one redeeming fact upon his record, that he 
has never been tamed and never been a servant. 
Neither has the hyena. 

The ordinary reservation Indian is not a curi- 
osity. The greasy red blanket, the variegated shirt, 
the extraordinary hat, the shanky legs, the brass 
jewelry, the shuffling gait and inturned toes, the 
encrusted rancidity, are seen every circus-day, and 
give such other evidences of nearness as even a 
blind man need not mistake. He sometimes indulges 
himself with a change of scene, and travels for his 
health, and threads the usual one long street of the 
Western town with his motley cavalcade of lean 
ponies, rawhide paniers, squaws, young ones, and 
colts. But the details of an unsought arjd irksome 



82 FROXTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

acquaintance with the wilder tribes of the 2:)lains and 
iu()imtains may more probably contain here and 
there an item of interest. 

And if one knows the Indian of eastern Kansas 
one need have no difficulty in recognizing on sight 
his brother of the plains. Tlie family resemblance 
is complete. Stolidity, and a surly indifference 
that passes for dignity, are noticeable traits of 
lirst acquaintance. To sit around, to loaf, to be 
always present where not Avanted, to go and come 
as though all hours and seasons and all enclosures 
were his own, are some of the endearing amiabili- 
ties that he 2:)ractises when not on the war-path, 
and while he is on speaking terms with that other 
power, the government of the United States. When 
not oif ended by some dereliction in etiquette un dis- 
coverable by any but himself, he is, contrary- to the 
general opinion, garrulous as a magpie aiul inquisi- 
tive as a coyote. He does not go home when he 
can find any other place, and will make a long sit- 
ting on the agent's door-step, without much apparent 
anxiety about the welfare of his family. I have 
written the word "home" with a knowledge of its 
great inappropriateness to anything that may be an 
Indian's. If he has any, it is the lodge, erected in 
the open prairie, and apparently as far as possible 
from any water. It is the " tepee " from which was 
taken the idea of that cumbersome and elaborate 
tent familiar to all durin-g the first year or two of the 
great war. The clean and carefully-sewed skins 
wdiich form the cover represent man}- weeks of hard 
squaw labor. The poles were brought from the 



COPPER DISTILLED. 83 

mountains, perhaps hundreds of miles away, and 
are worn smooth with constant dragging. AV^ithin 
this h)dge is gathered all there is of Indian comfort. 
Around the walls lie piles of skins — the beds and 
clothing of a numerous family indeed, if both Indians 
and insects are to be counted. In the intervals of 
occupation by the first-named, they are usurped by 
a horde of dogs, who are less to be blamed than 
pitied. If there be a fire, it is of that curious fuel 
called ''buffalo chips." It is kindled in the centre, 
and the fuel is left to burn, or merely to smoke, as 
shall happen on that particular day, and the smoke 
is left to find its way out on the supposition that the 
interior must finally become too full to hold an}' 
more. 

Between the straggling lodges loiter the popula- 
tion who by chance find themselves there in the 
intervals of looking after the agent, and the soldiers' 
and officers' quarters; children, young men, and the 
variety known under the disrespectful heading of 
''bucks." Dangling from saddles, tied to poles, 
and hung to every available projection, are ragged 
pieces and bloody lumps of buffalo-meat, the whole 
sum of the ordinary commissariat, in all stages of 
odorous decay. 

Everywhere and always the men are idle and 
the squaws at work. The hideous and toothless 
crone, the picture of unpitied age and misery, is 
never too old to toil, never old enough to rest. 
To her and her daughters, fall all the endless tasks 
of a nomadic life. Her j^lace is that of a slave ; a 
sl'4ve born and predestined, to whoni rest and liberty 



^4 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

shall never come. She is beaten, abused, reviled, 
driven like any other beast of burden. She is 
bought and sold ; wife, niotlier, and pack-animal, 
joined in one hideous and liopeless whole — a 
squaw. Slie must know but one lesson : to toil 
and be silent. Nevertheless, in all tliat is pecul- 
iarly Indianesque, she excels her master. In cun- 
ning, hatred, and revenge, in the specialties of 
cruelty and the refinements of torture, she has no 
equal on earth or in Hades. The saddest fate that 
can befall the captive is to be given over to the 
squaws. 

There is really no more beauty to be found 
among Indian "maidens" than there is among 
gorillas. IS^ever were the features that pertain to 
the unmixed race modified for beauty's sake. More 
false than even Cooper's wonderful tales, are the 
poems which descant upon the charms of dusky love 
and the romance of wilderness aflfection. Poetic 
license is a wanton and wayward thing, and has 
been made to caper nimbly to strange tunes ere 
now. But the man who invented those charming 
but phenomenally false Indian ideals, and first 
crowned the universal squaw — squat, angular, pig- 
eyed, ragged, wretched, and insect-haunted — with 
the roses of love, ought to see the woman once, 
and, as a punishment, to be subjected for a season 
to her indescribable blandishments. 

It is an experience probably not to be objected 
to for once, but a repetition of which is not desir- 
able, to watch for an hour the operations in prog- 
ress among this assemblage of heroes and nymphs. 



COPPER DISTILLED. 85 

There is a young squaw, who has become the pos- 
sessor of a little flour, and therewith she is up to 
her elbows in the process of making bread. She 
has a small Are, a battered iron pan, and sits by 
a little pool of muddy water in which the young 
ones have been wading, and out of which the dogs 
liave lapped. She pours in quanticm safficit of 
water, and stirs the pasty and streaked mass into 
proper congruity with one unwashed fore-finger. 
Presently she wipes this u])on her encrusted piece 
of a blanket, and places the mass in the ashes. 
Near by sits an old woman preparing a freshly- 
killed carcass for that jDrocess after which it becomes 
jerked beef. Her task it is to cut the whole of the 
animal into long thin strips for drying. But the 
ancient operator is the curiosity, not the beef or 
the process. Grey-haired, wrinkled, and haggard, 
her dried limbs scarcely concealed by sodden rags, 
she is the picture of hopeless and toiling wretched- 
ness. You may stand an hour by these two; you 
may talk, laugh, pity, or question, and they will 
never betray by sign or look the least knowledge of 
your presence. 

Yet, if you would see the very pink of hauteur 
and personal pride, you have but to observe yon 
gaunt and greasy son of the wilderness, who 
believes himself to be the glass of fashion and the 
mould of form. He is as unconscious of his odors 
as though redolent of patchouly and white rose. 
He is truly unwashed, and nearly naked save in 
the respect of paint, and, if the impolite truth must 
be told, swarming with that enterprising insect to 



86 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

wliich the Scottish poet wrote an apostrophe. He 
regards you with folded arms and defiant face, and 
desires to impress you with the idea that he is 
indeed "heap.-' 

I am not discussing the digger, celebrated in 
California annals ; nor any of tlie bug-eating pieces 
of tribes that are regarded with so much contempt 
until they begin to fight, like the Modocs. These, 
philanthropic reader, are those plains Apaches who 
have made us wish we were somewhere else with 
the baggage so many times, and who stand unex- 
celled in all the qualities so unpleasantly admirable 
in Indian character — endurance, cunning, ferocity, 
and vindictiveness. 

In Indian society, each family is the producer of 
all the articles required in daily life. Clothing, 
food, and weapons are all manufactured from the 
raw material. Barter and exchange were intro- 
duced by the white men, and even yet there is little 
wanted in exchange by the Indian that he is not 
much better without. It is true that so many 
ponies and robes were necessary alwa3^s in that very 
particular negotiation, the purchase of a wife. But 
each family is self-supporting, and comj^rises within 
itself the whole theory of patriarchal government. 
Resources are few, and actual wants as well ; and in 
this or any encampment may be seen in an hour the 
whole Indian economy. There are squaws who 
bring fuel and water, and others who are engaged 
in the tedious and laborious process of stretching 
and scraping that finally results in the white, 
pliable, and elaborately-ornamented "robe," which 



COPPER DISTILLED. ■ 87 

is the representative of Indian comfort, wealth, and 
art. Tliere is the crudely-awful process of savage 
cookery constantly going on, and the ponies to 
watch, catch, and saddle. There is the endless 
])acking and unpacking of a nomadic life. There 
are lodges to build and to take down again, and a 
hideous master to wait upon and please. The 
squaw does it all. Early in life she becomes old, 
and adds innumerable wrinkles, that attain to the 
dimensions of cracks, to a face that was repulsive 
even in babyhood. She is stoop-shouldered, bow- 
legged, tiat-hipped, shambling, and when at last she 
dies, nobody cares or cries, and she is even denied 
a soul and a hereafter. Through all her tasks and 
toils, she carries, strapped to a board and slung 
npon her back, the little, winking, brown-faced, 
silent babe, who seems never to laugh and never to 
cry She loves it, too, with a love that is the one 
human trait in her character. 

I once had for some months the indirect charge of 
three Apache children. During that time, and until 
they ran away, they were in malice, cruelty, filth, ill- 
temper, and general hatefulness, the nearest approach 
to little fiends I have ever encountered. It was 
necessary to watch them to keep them from killing 
each other. But they never cried, and were quiet, 
sly, and predatory, as so many weasels ; and while 
there was plenty of beef and bread, it was found 
impossible to keep tliem from eating out of the 
waste barrel. 

In the manufacturing processes of the Indian, 
nothing is wasted. His hunting is not pleasure- 



88 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

seeking slaughter, as ours is, but a means of liveli- 
hood. He is, or was, as cautious to prevent waste 
of numbers among the shaggy herds of the plains 
as the white man is of the thrift and well-being 
of his tame kine ; and for the same economical 
reasons. For from the buffalo, aided by a little 
wood, all his life's necessities may be supplied. 

Indian life is full of tawdry pomp and barbarous 
ceremonial, and in every camp, while the women 
steadily toil, the men are engaged in some noisy rite 
necessary to the proper celebration of some late feat, 
or to jDropitiate success in some contemplated ex- 
ploit. He is a tremendous braggart, our red friend, 
and he who boasts longest and loudest is generally 
taken at his word, as is usual everywhere. It is to 
obtain opportunity for this advertisement of per- 
sonal prow^ess, that a "dance" of some kind is 
always going on. Their names and purposes are 
nearly innumerable, and tlie candid uninitiated is 
not able to perceive any great difference in the 
screams, leapings, and horrible hootings, which 
characterize them all. Some of these noisy cere- 
monials are said to be religious, but all there is of 
religious sentiment is condensed into the one word 
"medicine." Everything in life lias its place in 
one or the other of two classes: it is either "good" 
or "bad" medicine. Camping-places where some 
evil has befallen are ever after bad medicine ; and 
all days and places where some defeat, sickness, or 
loss was suffered, are classed in the same category. 
All things that were fortunate are placed on the 
opposite side. In this book-keeping and running 



COPPER DISTILLED. 



account with fate, I do not know if there is a column 
for tilings indifferent and belonging nowhere, to 
finally balance with. The high-priest of this relig- 
ion is tlie celebrated '• medicine-man." The pre- 
cise qualifications of this dread person are somewhat 
indefinite. I am forced to confess, after knowing 
him personally, that the only perceptible differ- 
ence between him and his fellows seems to be that 
he is, if possible, idler, raggeder, and lazier than 
they are. But, dance or no dance, the buck usually 
wears the scalps he has taken, dangling from the 
greasy waist band of the unique article in pantaloons 
known as his breech-clout. This sketch may seem 
to the Eastern reader somewhat one-sided, though it 
is not so. What soft and twilight picture of She- 
mah-ga, the white dove, and We-up-mukh, the swift 
one, could be expected from one who has so often 
seen dangling from the waist of some loud heathen 
the long brown hair of his countrywomen ? 

One would naturally infer that begging would 
be incompatible with the Indian character. By no 
means; he is the most persistent and importunate 
beggar on this continent. Goyernmental manage- 
ment of him seems to have produced the impression 
upon his mind that there are constantly large arrears 
due him which he ought to have, and that every 
white man owes him something. Failing in his 
demands, he immediately proposes to "swap." He 
is apparently surprised at the white man's inability 
to always see the advantages accruing from these 
business operations, since one of the articles fre- 
quently offered in exchange is his squaw. One of 



90 FRONTIER ARMY SKFAVHES. 

the strongest evidences of idiocy to him is the fact 
that he can get more for a robe, a pony, or even for 
a paltry bow-and-arrows, than he conld for a whole 
family of squaws. 

The language of all Indians is peculiar. The com- 
paratively few words used are coarse and guttural, 
and so useful a part of it is action and gesture that 
any man may talk Indian — not speak it — who is at 
all skilful in the use of pantomime. The mellifluous 
names of mountains, lakes, and rivers must not be 
taken as examples, as they were probably never pro- 
nounced by the aboriginals as we spell them. In lieu 
of a complete vocabulary they use many signs, even 
in conversation among themselves. A class of deaf 
mutes are scarcely more skilful than they in com- 
municating ideas without words. I have seen long 
conversations carried on between very communi- 
cative specimens of copper-color and officers of the 
army, only prefaced by the word ''how'' and a most 
demonstrative and cordial shaking of hands. A cir- 
cular movement of the hand over the head aptly 
indicates a day, a jog-trot movement describes a 
horse, and the two together express that prominent 
idea of a wide and desolate region, a day's journey. 
A yet different movement of the hand indicates a 
buffalo — showing, in a way not to be mistaken, the 
peculiar gait of that animal. Numbers are indicated 
by rapidly throwing up the hands, displaying as 
many fingers as answer to the number to be indi- 
cated. Of course there are words enough to defi- 
nitely specify all things common to Indian life, and in 
a great many dialects. I have the idea, without any 



COPPER DISTILLED. 91 



pretensions to aboriginal scliolarsliip, tliat these sav- 
age tongues comprise but little beyond the ordinary 
forms of speech not capable of being written. 

There are many ideas of Indian skill and cunning 
that, while tliey are correct to some extent, are over- 
drawn and extravagant. The curious fact is that the 
trapper and miner and the hunter of the border, tlie 
voyageur^ and, indeed, most of those whose strange 
tastes have led them to follow and find pleasure in a 
frontier life, are ca])able of outwitting him in almost 
iiXi^vY instance. They understand what he is sure to 
do in a given case, and so either do it themselves or 
take measures to render his manoeuvre harmless. 
The trade they have learned from him they excel 
him in. By nature the Indian is possessed of a 
genius for stealth, like the cats, gaining his liveli- 
hood by still-hunting. He has an instinct of cunning 
that has sometimes been dignified by the name of 
strategy, but in his operations against an enemy he 
exercises but little strategy that is nobler than lying. 
He can cover his head with brown earth and lie 
among the coarse grass at the roadside, and, having 
thus concealed his sinister visage, speed an arrow 
after the traveller. He can occupy thirty-six hours 
in crawling a few rods to steal a mule he nnist have 
wanted very much, as I have known him to do, and 
finally succeed in his purpose. He will smoke the 
pipe which is the universally recognized sign of 
amity and peace, with many signs of good-will and 
much pacific grunting, and the same day lance you 
in the back, if there be fitting opportunity. He will 
be at great pains to make a false trail, and will imi- 



92 FRONTIEII ABMY SKETCHES. 

ttite the sounds of nature, and by a thousand devices 
attempt to mislead. But he has not a fraud in liis 
repertory in wliich the white man has not long since 
learned to outwit him. 

The few white men who have abandoned civiliza- 
tion and race for Indian society, aiding their adopted 
friends by a superior knowledge of civilized modes, 
are leaders, not followers. It is quite superfluous to 
add that they are the worse of the two, and have just 
humanity enough left to cause them to desire rather 
to reign in hell than serve in heaven. 

The art of reading the face of nature, so common 
in frontier life, is one so strange that we are apt to 
regard it as an instinct. To the Indian the track of 
the antelope is as plain as the path of a tornado. 
He tells the number and kind of his enemies, and 
the hours since they passed. He invented a system 
of signals before the days of Morse, and the smoke 
upon the distant hill, or the brief lire upon the 
mountain-side, convey to him tales he never misun- 
derstands. He traverses the vast surface of the 
monotonous wilderness, and, with an instinct as 
unerring as that of the bison, reaches his destina- 
tion. He hovers for days upon the path of his 
enem}', always near and always watching, yet never 
seen or heard save by those who have learned his 
art. All these things the white man has stolen 
from him. There are many men on the border who 
earn a livelihood by outwitting the Indian at his 
own game. 

It is a misapprehension to regard the weapons of 
the Indian as inefficient, and to wonder how he 



COPPER DISTILLED. 93 

managed to live and perpetually figlit before he 
became acquainted with tire-arms. These he uses, 
and very efficiently, in warfare ; but he has never 
discarded his own. The ancient bow-and-arrow, 
probably the iirst efficient weapon made by men, 
and used in all climes and races, is yet, in the hands 
of a Comanche, one of the most effective of weapons. 
A great American philosopher was ridiculed for 
recommending that the colonial troops should be 
furnished with this arm — for this among other 
things ; and yet the great genius of common sense 
was right, for it is infinitely more effective than that 
flint-cocked blunderbuss, the Queen Anne musket. 
Our Indian uses it in its simplest and rudest form — 
merely a piece of elastic wood, with a string made of 
sinew. The arrow is often an elaborate specimen of 
savage handicraft, being about twenty-eight inches 
in length, and elaborately feathered and ornamented. 
The ornamentation is peculiar to the tribe that made 
it, and the head is of iron, sometimes of flint, and is 
fastened in a cleft of the stick in a very neat and 
effective wa}^ by a wrapping of flne sinew. This 
slight and fragile sliaft will transfix the huge body 
of the buffalo, coming out on the opposite side, and 
penetrates. where the huge modern bullet is flattened 
or turned aside. It is almost ncnseless,''^ and at 
thirty yards seldom misses its mark. Once w^ounded, 
there is small chance of recovery, for tlie dried sinew 
relaxes in moisture, and the wood conies away and 
leaves an inextricable triangle of iron behind. 

*He who has heard the swish of an Apache arrow is no iiiorc likely to 
forgot it than he is the shrieH of a shell, 



9tl: FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES 

Indian fighting is not the placid and time-killing 
amusement it is sometimes imagined to be. Unless 
taken in mid-winter and by surprise, we have been 
passably well castigated at least half the time in all 
our little, cruel, revengeful and doubly costly wars 
with them. And taking him by surprise is very 
much like catching a weasel asleep. The plains 
Indian is a master, of horsemanship, and his brotlier 
of the mountains knows every tepid water-hole and 
every pass, and climbs like a goat. He of the prai- 
ries has a trick of being always upon that side of the 
horse that is opposite his enemy, and almost entirely 
concealed. Rapidly riding in a circle, he discharges 
his arrows under his horse's neck or over his back. 
He is here and there like a flash, and his great 
endeavor is to invest his enemy on every side, and 
offer him every possible inducement to exhaust, his 
ammunition. I have no advice to offer that gallant 
handful of skilful men known as the army of the 
Fnited States. They are acquainted fully with all 
there is of the Indian, and have reason to be. The 
modern soldier, trained in the mysteries of the skir- 
mish drill, lies quietly in his ]^lace and speeds after 
his foe the messenger that weighs four hundred 
grains, and that, singing as it flies, tumbles many a 
savage rider six hundred yards away. To fire delib- 
erately, to waste no bullets, and to have a sufficiency 
of cartridges and of water, means generally drawn 
battle, or, rarely, absolute victory. How very easy 
it is to write recipes ! 

This is plains fighting. There is a slightly vary- 
ing system among the mountains of Kew .Mexico, 



COPPER BIlSTILLED. 95 

There, all is concealment. The Indian of that 
region never meets the soldier, and the latter very 
rarely gets within hailing distance of the Indian. 
There is no noise, and from behind the rocks in 
the canon, or concealed by the sage and cacti, the 
arrow is sped that cuts short many an unsuspecting 
life. Indian dead are seldom left on the field. A 
prudence that is natural enough makes it desirable 
that losses should not be counted, and scalps should 
not be taken to be danced and exulted over. 

The name of the Great Spirit figures largely in 
all reports of Indian eloquence, just as the name of 
the Deity does in the fervid eloquence of the com- 
mon politician. It seems probable that the great 
Idea is as much a myth to the one as to the other. 
The theology of the Indian is simply a superstitious 
fear of something he does not understand. What 
kind of a heaven or hell he has imagined for himself, 
no man can precisely tell. There are no strictly 
religious forms, and certainly no idea of worship 
as we understand the term, and nothing that is 
regarded as especially sacred. The religious idea is 
not prominent, and seems almost entirely included 
in the ''medicine" business before referred to. Of 
that which we call superstition, there is plenty ; 
and, as with ourselves, luck is extensively pro- 
pitiated. 

Of course, in speaking of the Indian, the com- 
mon class is the just criterion. Yet, as is well 
known, the red race, and every other, is not want- 
ing in examples of force, dignity, and comparative 
greatness. lung Philip, Tecumseh, Eed Jacket, 



96 FBOXTIEll ARMY SKETCHES. 

Billy Bowlegs, are historic characters. Sa-tan-te, 
Kickiiig-Bird, Sitting Bull, and a grotesque category 
of their like, have been very extensively mentioned 
in later times. In some of them, the common farce 
of Indian dignity has been condensed into some- 
thing like the genuine article. The Indian has 
never been humble, and is unlikely to be much 
abashed in the presence of dignitaries, unless some 
One of them has become known to him to his great 
cost ; his firm conviction being that the meanest of 
his race stands at the head of all created intelli- 
gences. His is a race egoism, like that of the 
Chinese. When he goes to Washington, and 
attracts attention, and is interviewed and stared at, 
he believes it is because he is great and envied. 
In his mental constitution there is prominently 
wanting the faculty of appreciation. He knows 
that the wires that are stretched across the great 
country that once was his, "wliisper" mysterious 
messages in the ear of the white man, and that 
insensate paper "talks." But the knowledge pro- 
duces in his mind no respect for the people to 
whom the strange communings come. He does 
them the honor to accept them as facts, without 
further care or inquiry about them ; and the idea 
that they are any evidence of knowledge superior 
to his never enters his mind. 

With the old story of barbarity, cruelty, and 
rapine, the world is long since familiar. Nor is 
the conclusion just, that is so often prompted by 
philanthropy and by pity ibr the poor Indian, that 
the terrible story has been exaggerated. Indian 



COPPER DISTILLED. 97 

atrocities that have come directly under the notice 
of hundreds of hiw-abiding, charitable, and truthful 
men, would, truthfully delineated, be unfit for the 
ears of any but those wliose business it might be 
to investigate them. It would be almost impossi- 
ble for any man personally cognizant of the doings 
in portions of the Southwest for the last few years, 
to look his neighbor in the face and calmly tell 
what he has seen. The burnings, the ravishings, 
the impalements upon charred stakes, the cutting 
off of eyelids, the chewing of finger-joints, the 
knocking out of teeth and drawing of nails, and 
nameless mutilations of the dead; — are these things 
told in daily newspapers ? They have occurred in 
hundreds of instances that the reader has never 
heard of, and, I trust, will never hear of. But the 
frontiersman has not only heard — he has seen; 
and hardy and accustomed as he may be, his 
dreanis are made hideous by the remembrance of 
indescribable scenes. 

The man who is there, and who cannot go away, 
understands that last and chiefest trait of the Indian 
character which is either unknown or disregarded 
by all the divines and all the philanthropists : the 
inborn love of killing. There are animals whose 
strongest instinct is a thirst for slaughter that can- 
not be permanently assuaged. We know this, and 
accept the fact, but many of us do not understand 
and will not believe that there are men of the same 
kind, and whole tribes of them ; that the Indian, 
in his natural condition, and before he has been 
fenced about by those surroundings of civilization 
7 



98 FRONTIER ARMY tiKETGHES. 



wliicli lie cannot break, has tliis as liis strongest trait, 
and that he has never, under anj circumstances, 
entirely changed his character. This is why each 
tribe is, compared with the territory it occupies, a 
mere handful in the desert. A great incentive to 
war is the pleasure of torturing the captives. The 
whole history of the Indian is a history of blood. 
We have only glimpses of it, gory and incarna- 
dine, lurid with devastating flame and ghastly with 
agony. Tribes and races have been utterly exter- 
minated by other tribes, leaving only rude tumuli 
and broken pottery to tell of them and all their 
works. They are in unknown regions fighting now. 
They live and fight and die alone, their great vic- 
tories celebrated by a midnight orgy, with shouts 
and groans alike dying among echoes that never 
speak again. It is contrary to Indian nature to 
desire to be at peace when war is possible. The 
tribal glory that he loves comes from war, and it 
is his only passion. If ofi'ended, even causelessly, 
he does not seek redress save sometimes as an 
excuse, and does not ask to have his wrongs righted 
with any desire that they should be. He begins 
to kill — and complains afterward. His massacres 
are sudden and unexpected in the midst of appar- 
ent harmony. The hunger for murder and torture 
is sated for a time, and all the tedious explana- 
tions and theories come afterward. 

And yet this chapter is but the ultra-Missouri 
view of the case — conclusions gathered from actual 
contact. By a strange inversion of logic and the 
meaning of words, I have heard such views of the 



COPPER DISTILLED. 99 

Indian called prejudices ; which must mean, if any- 
thing, that they are conclusions formed without 
knowledge — pre-judgments. Yet it is quite appa- 
rent that a good deal that is said on the other side, 
and in support of tlie directly opposite view, is said 
by those who have many of them never seen an 
Indian in his native and unconverted state. They 
have attained to a high plane of right, justice, and 
truth. They measure the Indian question by gen- 
eral rules, that, tliough enlightened and just beyond 
dispute, yet do not suit the hard facts of the case. 
They have had no adequate experience with the 
noble red man, who, if they could see him and 
know him well, would be found to possess a vast 
capacity for astonishing his best friends, by a yawn- 
ing gulf of want in every noble trait. I believe I 
understand something of the philanthropists, and, 
instead of reviling them, I honor their views upon a 
subject of which tliey seem to stand upon one verge 
and I and my fellows upon the other. Tliere is 
another side to the story, and these I conceive to be 
some of the items of it: 

The Indian is award of the government, and yet, 
in his tribal capacity, a sovereign power capable of 
making treaties and ceding his vast and unused pos- 
sessions. 

He is a man independent in his own nationality, 
governed by his own laws, and neither knowing nor 
bound to know anything of ours, and who must yet 
be held amenable to trial and punishment in our 
courts, under laws of which he knows no more than 
he does of logarithms and the Greek particle. 



100 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

He is the victim of a complicated system of com- 
pensations for liis various siirj-enders, wliicli he does 
not understand, and which seem to have been spe- 
cially framed for the benefit of unscrupulous com- 
merce and the fostering of trading schemes, and the 
formation of rings stronger than the government 
itself. 

With phenomenal short-sightedness and unwis- 
dom, he has been located upon new reservations 
where in the coarse of a few ^^ears he would be j)re- 
cisely in the wa}^ again ; and what is more, he has 
an absolute right to stay there which no reasonable 
man can deny him. 

He is the ancient and time-worn subject of polit- 
ical ex2:)eriments, that are adopted and then lost 
sight of at once. N^otable among these is that which 
seems to be based upon the idea that the piety of 
an agent would inoculate a tribe and chemically 
change an atmosphere in which everybody was sup- 
posed to be bent upon doing everything that was 
wrong and avoiding everything that was right, and 
to be spoiling for a fight always. 

He has been fed, coaxed, and fought at the same 
time. He has consequently become a vicious boy, 
bad enough by nature and spoiled by management 
that would demoralize an angel. He has drawn 
rations in Arizona, in the midst of hostilities vigor- 
ousl}^ conducted by him in ]Rew Mexico ; and has 
consequently been occupied during his intervals of 
rest and refreshment in laughing at his enemies, 
and reviling those two antipodal officials, the Secre- 
tary of War and the Secretary of the Interior. 



COPPER DISTILLED. 101 

It has been seemingly forgotten that he is rather 
a quarrelsome person, to whom revenge is religion. 
Consequently those in whose hands it entirely rested 
to bring him to terms, and rectify his somewhat 
savage notions of right and wrong, have been left 
without any jurisdiction over or control of the 
causes of his numerous complaints ; and this, while 
his revenges are always directed against liis readiest 
victims, the defenceless. A woman's h)ng scalp-lock 
is as valuable and honorable to him as a warrior's. 
He has never been made to understand that the 
dispensers of his rations are able also to fight him, 
and willing. If lie were given to know that the 
ability to feed was combined with the power to con- 
trol, he would, were he but an animal — which he is 
not — be careful of his behavior. 

In addition to this, it is time that it should be 
understood that there is no human power that can 
stop the migration from east to west. That situa- 
tion must be accepted not only because it miLst^ but 
because civilization is of more consequence than 
barbarism, and homes of greater importance than 
the preservation of vast hunting-grounds — a million 
acres to each hunter. After years of vacillation and 
costly experiment, it is time that some rational 
attempt were made to meet and improve a situation 
that is unavoidable. There is one man who can do 
it, understanding, as he does, more of the frontier, 
more of the immigrant and of the Indian, tlian 
statesmen and secretaries have either leisure or 
opportunity for. It is Captain Jinks, the careless 
and jaunty one, whose qualities and capacities not 



102 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



one in a tlioiisand understands. He is the hardiest 
frontiersman of his times, and over countless leagues 
of dreary nuirching, and beside innumerable camp- 
fires, he has done what it woukl seem no other man 
who had aught to do with the Indian business has 
done : he has kept his honor and his uniform clean. 
He is court-martialed and dismissed sometimes, for 
petty offences not criminal save to "an officer and a 
gentleman,'' or for a human disobedience of petty 
orders. But have you lately heard of him as specu- 
lating in Indian supplies, or as a member of any 
"ring?" He is not good, and could seldom be 
accurately described by the somewhat worn phrase, 
" a Christian gentleman." He takes cocktails, and 
plays at cards sometimes, and is guilty of many a 
peccadillo. But his environment is peculiar. Nine 
times in ten he believes that death is better than 
dishonor. He does not want the Indian manage- 
ment, because he says he believes it to be demoral- 
izing. It is no more than one of Jinks's peculiar 
reasons. It is his business to obey orders; and when 
he must he will take it. Then, by degrees, the 
"young men," whom the chief is always saying he 
cannot control, will find themselves restrained by 
the relentless doors of the post guard-house, in 
company with the man who has been selling them 
whiskey, until reflection shall have cooled their 
ardor. The preparations for a raid or an escapade 
will be observed, and the parties thereto required to 
give bail. Every ration and every dollar will go to 
those entitled to them, and to no others. He does 
not take sides ; he does not argue the case ; he 



COPPER DISTILLED. 103 



obeys orders, and is interested in having others do 
precisely the same thing. A few dozen of him will 
keep a thousand citizens out of the Indian Territory, 
wliere they say they are determined to go, and yet 
have no especial love for either Creeks, Choctaws, 
or Seminoles, whose rights he is protecting. He is 
in a fight every summer — a fight that is never of 
his own making ; and we do not object then to his 
methods of persuasion, or to the fact that he repre- 
sents the power of the sword, and not that of the 
hymn-book and the gospel of peace. 

It is time that we should cease to indulge in theo- 
ries and hopes. It is getting to be a very old ques- 
tion to be still unsolved ; and undoubtedly we have 
made a failure thus far in our management of it — a 
failure that is as ridiculous as anything v/e have ever 
done as a nation, and that has resulted in infinite 
wrong. Our Indian is bad, and we insist that he is 
good. Our management is equally bad, and we 
practically insist that that is also good. The man- 
agement of her colonies by England has always been 
a reproach to her. She did not persuade when they 
were determined not to be persuaded. But she has 
managed them, and also her Indians. There is no 
more ineffective treatment for savages than the reci- 
pes of philanthropy. These are not the days of cru- 
elty, conquest, and extermination, with which Chris- 
tian philanthropy has contended so long. There 
seems to be no cause for the application of the rule 
of submissive quiet and gentle persuasiveness under 
all circumstances. If we wish to prevent sudden 
raids, reprisals, massacres, the burning of homes 



104 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 



and the violation of women, and wide-spread liorror i 

and dismay, we must iind a way not only to be just J 

but also to be strong. If we feed and clothe, we ' 

must also govern and prevent. : 



yi. 

JOE^S POCKET. 

"TTARUOT^ ag'in! I swar, Joe Biggs, jou air tlie 
-J-^ orneryest liiiinan as lives. Don't say nutliin' 
to me, fur I can't stand it. Thar's the bed ! " And 
the maligned Joe Biggs blindly flung himself upon 
the creaking cords of a not very hixurious conch, 
aided thereto by a movement on the part of the 
speaker that was too vigorous to be regarded, even 
by a person in Mr. Joseph Biggs' s condition, as a 
caress. 

The people outside laughed a little at their com- 
rade's reception, though in all likelihood expecting 
something of the kind as they escorted him home 
from the sutler's store, and began an irregular 
retreat as the tumbled flaxen head of the woman 
appeared at the door. Moonlight is kind to any- 
thing at all resembling beauty; but homeliness, as 
embodied in a chalky face, nntidy hair, a scowl 
which bodes no kindness, and over all a shabb}^ 
night-dress, has no friend in the beams that seem to 
cover all homeliness save such as this. The woman 
turned away again, and retired into the darkness of 
the cabin; the retreating footsteps of the roisterers 
died away in the distance, and soon, under the placid 
beams, it was as though there were no drunken men 
or cross women in all the mountain world. 

105 



106 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



It was a cabin beside a rock-littered path. The 
pine logs of which it was constructed had been 
cut from the stumps that dotted the hill-side hard 
by, and, so far as rude skill could make it so, the 
place was comfortable enough. It was tlie ancient 
model of the frontier cabin, strangely placed in a 
country of adobes and earthen roofs. There was one 
door, one window, a chimney of mud and stones, and 
a small yard, enclosed by a homely and crooked 
apology for a fence. It was such a house as one 
might easily find at this day in the Green River 
region of Kentucky or in southern Indiana, and 
looked as though it might have been taken up bodily 
and brought thither as an architectural curiosity. 
The surroundings were pines, verdure, and general 
mountain coolness, in strong contrast with the tire- 
some adobe villages and low fields which lay in the 
valley below, l^or was the cabin entirely alone. A 
quarter of a mile away was tlie quadrangle of green 
grass, in the centre of which arose a slender flag- 
stafi", surrounded by houses but little better than 
Joe's, but in which dwelt men and women so dififer- 
ent that he saw them only from afar, and never 
heard their names. There- were glimpses of white 
canvas, horses neighed in long sheds, and, as if to 
guard the bare standard of authority, a sentinel 
paced back and forth before the flag-stafi", and two 
brass guns stood open-mouthed and glittering on 
either side. In a word, it was that universal condi- 
tion of settlement and safety throughout tlie land — 
a military post. A spot than which it would have 
been hard to find one more srreen and brilliant, was 



JOE'S POCKET. 107 



enlivened all the year by the parade of arms, and the 
incense of military devotion arose each morning and 
evening in the sullen growl and lingering blue 
smoke of a gun at whose echoes the deer started and 
listened and the rabbit bounded away to his cover in 
the copse. 

But if you followed the road that struggled indis- 
tinctly past Joe^s cabin, you would soon find yourself 
among balsamic odors in glades and dells, rocks 
which had been rolled from their original beds and 
tumbled down the hill, and hill-sides whose brown 
earth showed signs of curious work. It was a land 
of wild scenes and wilder men, protected only by 
force from the Apache, and where the dwellers, even 
in their worst estate, could dream of nothing better. 
But it was also the land of gold. Where the stream 
ran through the valley, a mile away, the little mule 
drew, in an endless path, the shaft of the primitive 
arrastraj the Mexican patiently rocked his cradle 
with dirt carried thither upon a donkey's back ; and 
over all the scene brooded the restless spirit of 
American enterprise, keeping ill-assorted company 
with ancient peace, wandering, prospecting, specu- 
lating, and gambling, — rough, vindictive, generous, 
and ever athirst for wild adventure and possible 
wealth. 

Joe Biggs was that sort of person who needs no 
particular description to those acquainted with his 
species in a mining country. He was, or had once 
been, a Tennessean, though so long absent from his 
native country as almost to have forgotten the fact. 
Though still a robust and middle-aged man, he had 



108 FRONTIER AR31Y SKETCHES. 

been for many years a mountaineer, and a constant 
victim of all tlie vicissitudes wliicli here, as else- 
where, befall a man whose principal characteristic is 
recklessness. It would seem to be an unfavorable 
soil for the growth of domestic infelicities, and that 
any kind of prudence ought to enable a man to leave 
them out of his category of sorrows. But Joe had 
not that prudence, and in the appearance and temper 
of his last wife he was the most unfortunate man in 
these diggings. He was the kind of man that is 
always married — married without regard to place, 
circumstances, or compatibility. There are many 
men like Joe. The world could easily be deluged 
with narratives of domestic sorrow; only the afflicted 
parties seem to agree at least upon the point of suc- 
cessful concealment. 

Years before, when the mountaineer's tall figure 
was very straight and his tawny beard knew no 
thread of gray, in his saunterings in and about tlie 
village he one day came upon a maid of the nut- 
brown variety, whose eyes were very black and 
whose brown shoulders were very shapely ; and as 
she milked goats in the little corral, he leaned upon 
the adobe wall and tried to twist his Tenuessean 
dialect into something like Spanish. It is useless 
to tell the rest. The dead-and-gone beauty wdio 
was his wife for a few years had long been among 
the memories and regrets that men everywhere 
carry about with them. We cannot tell what 
thoughts were at work in Joe's heart, as he delved 
in the mountain side, while the daughter she had 
left him sat near and watched the work, or how 



JOE'S POCKET. 109 



sweet the water tasted that the little one brought 
him from the spring, or what weight}^ and import- 
ant affairs were discussed as her lively chatter went 
continuouslj'- on through all the work, and Joe's 
kindly bass came in between. Fathers and daugh- 
ters are an exclusive company; all the world knows 
their proverbial intimacy, and how in this perfect 
equality of June and December, June is generally 
conceded to be, if not the bigger, at least the wiser 
of the two. 

But Joe's last matrimonial venture was of a dif- 
ferent kind. He sadly knew it was so, and made no 
especial concealment of the fact among his numer- 
ous and very festive acquaintances. She was an 
attenuated and awkward Texan belle when he iirst 
saw her — one of the kind that is constantly wan- 
dering westward, and . is ever ready to be married 
upon a day's acquaintance, and to almost anyone. 
A man is a man; and their tastes have not been 
highly educated by their surroundings. Joe must 
have been demented. He often thought of the cir- 
cumstance as one that might have that extenuating 
possibility as an excuse ; for he came, saw, con- 
queredp and led his angular bride away from the 
Cottonwood beneath wliicli the ceremony had been 
performed, all within three days from his first sight 
of her "folks's " camp. Then the imprudent man's 
troubles began; and for about a year he staggered 
home from the trader's store, in manner and form, 
and meeting with the same deserved reception, as 
set forth in the beginning of this history. 

So, as the woman comforted her wakefulness 



110 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

with muttered words that were only a compromise 
with profanity^ and her man Joe snored in fortu- 
nate unconsciousness of the storm, there was still 
another person in the cabin, who, more than any 
of the three, was the sufferer through habitual 
drunkenness and domestic strife. The daughter 
was fifteen years old ; an age which, with such as 
she, means all the softness, tenderness, and beauty 
of youth, with the almost mature attractiveness of 
womanhood. That her training had thus far been 
peculiar and imperfect was not her fault, nor that 
of her uncouth tutor. He was rough and coarse, 
as his kind ever are ; but years of roughness and 
coarseness sometimes fail to blot out in a man's 
heart the time when he himself was young and 
untouched by the iron that sears and hardens. As 
he went daily to delve in the hill-sides, ever search- 
ing for the yellow dust and ever finding only 
enough to feed desire, the child went with him, 
grasping his big finger with her tender childish 
clasp. As she lay asleep on his ragged coat in the 
pine-shadows, while the noon heats baked the bare 
brown hills that were dotted with pine stumps like 
huge nails half-driven, the long lashes trailing her 
flushed cheek and the withering mountain flowers in 
her little tired pudgy hand, old Joe's heart warmed 
toward her with a feeling that brought back every- 
thing that was good in the early youth of a wild 
life. The mountaineer was not utterly bad, nor 
entirely weak ; and day by day her fingers twined 
in his beard, and her immeasurable love crept into 
his heart, and a consciousness of his trust grew 



JOE'S POCKET. Ill 



upon liiiii. And then the little one had the virtue 
of a generation of East Tennessee mountain virtue 
in her veins. But Joe never thought of that. The 
rough miners sometimes saw their neighbor en- 
gaged in strange occupations, as thej passed by. 
Leaning on his pick, the child's bright eyes fixed 
upon his face, and forgetful in his earnestness 
that not only walls but mountains and trees have 
ears, he told her of the country and the people 
where he was born ; of coon-hunts aud log-roll- 
ings ; of the few months during which he had 
learned all he ever knew of the hardness of the 
benches of a primitive school-house; and, more 
than all, of his mother. He tried to make the 
wondering infant understand that such as he could 
have a mother, and he tried to teach her some of 
the things that mother had taught him. Perhaps 
there were other listeners than the passing miners 
or the wondering child, as, in his blundering way, 
he told her of those mysteries we all do but dream 
of and hope for, but with dreams and hopes that 
are not as the visions of the night. But Joe told 
his daughter of that Maker of all things, whose 
presence seemed to rest like a shadow upon these 
primeval silences, and of the Christmas of so many 
hundred years ago, and, indefinitely and with many 
blunders, of right, wrong, love, kindness, and duty. 
But in the end he always came back to the begin- 
ning of his story; to what he "used to was" and 
"had orter be now," and to his mother. He seemed 
to fancy that she might be living yet. "When 



112 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 



your daddy finds a pocket, we'll go back there, little 



'," 



lie often said. 



Joe's bad ways had begun but lately; and his 
daughter, still his companion, but no longer a child, 
began to have the dawn of trouble upon her fair 
childish face. I^ow, when the woman's tongue had 
abated its vigor, and she too seemed to have at 
last forgotten her husband's offence in slumber, the 
girl arose and glided through the open door into the 
brilliant night. The conventionalities of the world 
had little place in her life, and as she leaned npon 
the broken fence and looked down the mountain 
road, her feet bare in the dew and her round arms 
hdng listlessly upon the topmost rail, she was not 
conscious of herself, or that the beautiful light, so 
unkind to her step-mother's features, transformed 
hers into those of a Madonna, as she looked uj) into 
the blue depths with the tears upon her lashes. By 
and by, in the vague unhappiness she could hardly 
define, and for which she knew no remedy, she laid 
her head upon her arms and did what the woman of 
all times and races is apt to do : she cried. It was 
past midnight. She heard faintly the sentiners 
challenge, as the nightly pomp of the "grand 
rounds " came and passed ; the faint clink of arms 
and the small commotion at the guard-house, as the 
surly crew of prisoners fell into line to be counted; 
and, lastly, the retreating footsteps and settled silence 
that proclaimed the untimely ceremony done. She 
had heard these sounds a hundred times ; they were 
not curious, and she straightway forgot them in her 
girlish tears. 



JOE'S POCKET. 113 



Presently the sound of a quick footstep caiiie 
nearer and nearer up the road. It was a jaunty 
figure that came rapidly toward her, as she raised 
her sorrowful head to look. The crimson scarf 
upon his shoulder jjroclaimed him only officer-of- 
the-day, but it was worn like the baldric of an earl. 
The moonlight played upon button and epaulet, and 
kissed the sombre plume in his hat, and Hashed up 
and down the bright scabbard he carried upon his 
arm. But all this was not so much the fault of 
Lieutenant Thurston, U.S.A., as of the moonlight, 
lie was only a soldier, but he was young, and had 
about him a certain elan that should distinguish 
every man that follows the Hag for love of arms. 
As he came he timed his footsteps to the tune he 
whistled — something that had in it a suggestion of 
life-let-us-cherish and devil-may-caredness that was 
strangely at variance with the sleepy hour at which 
he marched. 

This blithesome son of Mars had finished his 
rounds as required in regulations, and under the 
influence of wakefulness, and stimulated by the 
night's balmy splendor, had continued his walk up 
the mountain road. Was that all ? Young men's 
actions sometimes find unconscious excuses in what 
they are pleased to call their hearts. He had often 
been here before ; so often, that every gaunt cactus 
and every gray stone in the rugged road was a famil- 
iar thing. As he came blithely, so he always 
returned thoughtfully. About the hardest thinking 
the lieutenant did was when he was returning from 
Joe's house. Then the remembrance of a home 



114 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



three thousand miles away used to come unsatisfac- 
torily into his mind. He thought of the starchy 
respectability, the gold-spectacled and precise pro- 
priety, of the middle-aged gentleman whom he des- 
ignated as ''the governor." Then, there was a fair 
sister or two, and a circle of acquaintances. But 
the crowning reflection was, ''What would mother 
think?" This lady the lieutenant knew very well, 
and all her prominent characteristics were long since 
so well memorized that he thought with a compunc- 
tive pang of the pain he might inflict by an alliance 
with anything tliat lacked the grand essential of 
''respectable connections." That there was another 
side to the question was also true. He was far away 
from anything that touched family respectability. 
He was literally owned, and all his hours and move- 
ments were governed, by the great republic whose 
uniform he wore. His home was his quarters, his 
profession his sword. Long years would probably 
pass before he would even see the home or the peo- 
ple who, little as they suspected it, had almost 
passed out of his life. 

Joe's daughter was not in the habit of waiting 
for this young man beside the fence — not by any 
means ; and if you had questioned her, she would 
have deliberately, not to say indignantly, denied it. 
But the young soldier had readied that stage of his 
experience when he often came so far merely to see 
the homely house in which lived and slept the crea- 
ture who was most in his mind. He had often seen 
her, and spent a half-hour in listening to her lisping 
English, watching the flushes come and go upon her 



JOE'S POCKET. 115 



cheek, weighing her tact and evident intelligence, 
and, after a careless fashion, falling more deeplj^ in 
love. But it had always been upon seemingly casual 
occasions, and by daylight. 

As he espied her, he stopped suddenly in his 
tune, and said, as usual, "By Jove!" 

She, after hesitating a moment between inclina- 
tion and a natural sense of propriety, stayed where 
she was, and the flush on her cheek was strangely 
at variance with the tear-marks that were also there. 

This rash young man could not have felt more 
intense pleasure at meeting any of the queens of 
society than he did then. It was reason enough to 
him, as it would have been to most of us under 
similar circumstances; and he came near and held 
out his hand. Then he also leaned carelessly upon 
the fence, and looked at the sweet oval face, red and 
brown, glorified by the moonlight and stained with 
tears. 

"You've been crying," said he. 

^'■Si, Sefior; — yes," and then, grateful for the 
listening ear, she began to tell the cause of her 
unhappiness. In the attempt, her sorrows overcame 
her, and she laid her head down upon her arms 
again, and cried harder than ever. 

There was, indeed, little use for her to do aught 
but cry. Her friend already knew, or guessed, the 
story. But the effect was such as might have been 
expected under the circumstances. The pretence of 
comforting, combined with a secret desire to have 
the pretty trouble go on as long as possible, came to 



116 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

the lieutenant on this occasion as naturally as it 
does to all men. 

''Don't cry," he said. ''It will all come right 
in the morning." 

Such miserable platitudes are not expected to 
amount to much in any case ; and they did not in 
this. 

"The — the woman b-b-eats me," she said, and 
the sobs became more violent. 

Then the usual remarks were at an end. "Beats 
you! — do you mean to sa}^ that the miserable old 
— ah, — that she has ever struck you ?" and his face 
grew to an unseemly red at once. 

''Look here!" he continued, as she made no 
reply; "why don't you and the old — and your 
father — cut loose from this sort of thing? You and 
he can live together, can't you ? Go somewhere ; 
do something; but," he added, "don't go very 
far." 

Then he came a little nearer — so near that a 
tress of the girl's long black hair lay beneath his 
hand. "You must not imagine that because your 

disr that because your father gets drunk every 

night, and the — the other creature strikes you, that 
you have no friends. If this kind of thing occurs 
again, we'll make it trarm for them;" and the lieu- 
tenant placed his hand caressingly upon her shoul- 
der. 

Perhaps he meant well — we will suppose he 
could hardly lielp it ; but it was a mistake. The 
girl arose from her bent posture, and turning toward 
him a haughty and indignant face, and eyes that 



JOE'S POCKET. 117 

showed a remarkable capacity for the expression of 
anger, without a word, went into the house. 

As Lieutenant Thurston walked slowly home- 
ward, he was not thinking so much of respectable 
connections as of something else. His mind was 
very much occupied with a new idea of the woman 
he had just left. Our military friend was learning 
that womanliness, and tlie indescribable and invis- 
ible virtue that clothes it, are, regardless of associa- 
tions and education, an instinct and inheritance. 
Old Joe's beautiful child was not a mere half- 
Spanish girl. On this night at least, if never again, 
her Saxon blood and her father's homely teachings 
had come to her aid. The soldier pondered these 
things. lie was deeply stung, and his face burned 
with mortification. But he was not ignoble, and 
the unspoiled honor of his fresh manhood asserted 
itself. "If that is the kind of woman she is going 
to be," he mused, " then, by Jove! I can't see what 
family respectability has to do with it all." And 
he was more d-eeply in love than ever. 

In the morning, Joe's spouse awoke sullen and 
sour, and berated him more than ever. The girl 
went about with a sad face, over which came at 
intervals a red flush, possibly caused by recollec- 
tions of last night. The miner went away silent 
and sad, and the girl stood in the morning sun- 
shine again by the broken fence, and watched the 
guard-mount afar off, and thought she discerned a 
tall figure there, and almost wished he would come 
again. How small her world was, and how large a 



lis FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

figure one man could make in it, she never reflected. 
It is ever so. A woman's world may be filled by a 
very tiny dot, so she but loves it. 

When Joe Biggs came again, at noon, he talked 
aside to his daughter: 

"We can't stand this much longer, kin we, Sis?" 
and as she only answered by a look, he continued : 

"I've done made up my mind. We'll quit. It 
was a mistake o' mine" — pointing with his thumb 
over his shoulder toward the house — "but I meant 
it well. Do ye 'member the place over the mountain 
I showed you once when we wus thar? Well, there's 
suthin' thar that's wuth goin' after. How do I know? 
Well, I don't jest hnmn; but this kind o' thing can't 
last alius, — luck' 11 come to a man sometime, an' I'm 
a mind to go an' try fur it thar. Git ye ready, Sis ; 
we'll go fur it now — to-night; an' mind, now, don't 
be a tellin' nobody." 

When Lieutenant Thurston passed the miner's 
cabin, soon after sunset, he thought he saw a laden 
donkey, whose rider was a woman, fiir up among the 
pine-shadows on the mountain road. It was indis- 
tinct in the gloaming, but the man who plodded 
behind reminded him of Joe. The matter passed 
from his mind, and he forgot it in thinking of some- 
thing he did not see; for the only living thing at the 
cabin was the woman who sat upon the step, her 
chin in her hands, eyeing him, as he sauntered past, 
with all the vindictiveness of her kind toward any- 
thing that looks like respectable humanity — that is, 
"stuck up." 

The days passed, and the weeks, and nobody 



JOE'S POCKET. 119 



seemed able to answer the question, ''Where is 
Joe r' The woman came to the commandant for 
bread, and declared herself cruelly deserted, and very 
badly wounded as to her feelings ; and finally she 
departed, with a party of her countrymen who wan- 
dered like Midianites over the land, for some region 
where men were more faithful. As for Lieutenant 
Thurston, he kept his thoughts, whatever they were, 
to himself. He w^as suspected of a careless weakness 
for Joe's daughter — and small blame to him; and 
he was rallied upon that point by his companions. 
But he seemed to fail to see anything particularly 
pleasant in their careless remarks about the "lost 
child,'' and they desisted. It would not be strange 
if he should think of his wise advice to her that 
moonlight night, as somehow connected with her 
and her father's departure, and suspect that the 
character of his last interview w^ith her was such as 
to render him rather odious to her thoughts than 
otherwise. 

The summer months, with their glory of air and 
sunshine and balm, passed aw^ay, and when the earli- 
est snowflakes of a mountain winter were sifted over 
the land Joe and his daughter wx're well-nigh for- 
gotten. But the dames and gentlemen of the garri- 
son would have been much surprised had they 
known that the gayest and brightest of them all, the 
life of their limited social gatherings, had a greater 
regard for the mere recollection of the old miner's 
beautiful child than he had for all of them, or for the 
names and faces in the far-away land where he had 
spent his boyhood and which lie still called "home." 



120 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

Tlie lieutenant, liis fellow-officers tlioiiglit, was grow- 
ing "odd." He borrowed the topographical charts 
from the adjutant's office and applied himself to the 
geography of the wild mountain ranges. lie ques- 
tioned the wandering hunters and prospectors, with 
the private hope that they might tell him something 
of the persons he was thinking of. But all were 
ignorant. eToe and his daughter had strangely 
dropped out of the world. 

The young soldier began to think he had reached 
that period in life in which a man seems no longer 
to have any use for himself. Tie had grown tired of 
his daily life and his routine duties. His pleasures 
had become very tame and insipid, and the winter's 
inactivity, though only begun, seemed endless and 
irksome. His constant thought of the miner's 
daughter, which was the real cause of all this, he 
excused to himself under the plea of ordinary curios- 
ity. But it was a curiosity which wondered if she 
had gone because of him, and if he ever occurred to 
her thouglits. The idea gained possession of him that 
he might find her, and that he would like to try. As 
he thought of it, it seemed that by some rare chance 
he might come upon her hidden among the hills 
of that almost unknown stream whose waters ran 
toward the Pacific thirty miles to the westward. All 
that men knew of the head-waters of the Gila then 
was told by returning explorers, of a mysterious 
stream whose current was disturbed only by the 
leaping of the trout, of uplands smiling in the green- 
ness of almost perpetual summer, and valleys in 
which the traveller seemed to have entered upon a 



JOJ'J'S POCKET. 121 



new world. The hills were full of i)recions things, 
and the unhniited game which started from almost 
every brake made it a kind of luinter's paradise. 
Lieutenant Thurston had heanl much of this current 
geography. For a long time he had heard carcslessly; 
but of late it had seemed to offer a fair excuse for 
getting rid of himself. When he had asked of the 
commandant a scouting party, and had been refused, 
he bethought himself of a hunting expedition, and 
asked for leave of absence and an escort. These he 
managed to obtain; and after three days of careful 
preparation, with eight men and laden mules, he 
wended his way, through the slush of melting snow, 
up the mountain; where old Joe and his daughter 
had gone before. TIk; hiaii upon whom dei)eiided 
his safety and final return was a Mexican guide, wlio 
confirmed all the stories of the Gila country, and 
who liad led explorers there, he said, before Thurston 
was born. 

Were this a journal of a traveller's adventures, 
the frosty solitudes of mountains where perhaps a 
traveller's foot had never been before might well 
furnish a page. Men write of the Adirondacks, and 
the strange wildness of regions where every summer 
the tourists come. But those experiences in which 
man becomes a companion of the silence that has 
been unbroken since time was young, are seldom 
told. The slant winter sunshine lingered along the 
aisles of pine, and tinged with a melancholy glory 
white peaks unseen and unnamed before. They 
drank of snow-born streams that passed in cold and 
tasteless purity away to unknown depth and dis- 



122 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

tance. The holly hung its drapery of green and 
crimson upon the hoary ledges, and the greenbriar 
and bramble lay in matted impenetrability across 
the cavern's mouth. Great bowlders sat poised 
upon the edges of abysmal depths, seeming as 
though the mountain wind or the finger of a child 
miglit hurl them headh^ng. The hanging creepers 
and the gray moss clung to dizzy acres of perpen- 
dicular granite with tenacious fingers that defied 
time and the storm. Here and there the cold blue 
depths of a mountain tarn lay silent between gray 
peaks that had been mirrored there ten thousand 
years ; and in its oozy edges were the sharp inden- 
tures made by the hoofs of the mountain sheep, the 
round imprint of the wild-cat's cushioned tread, the 
dog-track of the fox, and, hardening in the crust, the 
curious marks that always seem to have been made 
by some wandering barefoot child, where the bear's 
cub has come to lap before his winter slumber. And 
over all there brooded a magnificent silence that 
seemed a fitting respite from the volcanic thunders 
which, when the world was young, had strewn the 
valley with its fire-scarred rocks and thrust the bold 
peaks into the smoky air. The gray bird of solitude 
sat upon the crag and plumed his wing so near that 
the lone wanderers could see the yellow ring in his 
relentless eye, and winged his silent way to his 
unknown eyrie ; and save him there seemed to be 
no inhabitant of earth or air. In glens so deep that 
only the sun at midday looked into their recesses, 
the hardy mountain fiowers still bloomed, and the 
coarse grass was green and brilliant. The ledges 



JOE'S POCKET. 123 



dripped with the ooze of melting snow, and the 
slender icicles which grew each night fell tinkling 
into the rocky depths in the morning's sun. On the 
far summits, where the foot of man shall never rest, 
winter held unbroken sway. The gathered snow 
which propped itself against the pines on the moun- 
tain-side sometimes broke loose from its fastenings, 
and tumbled, a fleecy cataract, which flung its spray 
into their faces, and buried an acre in its rest. And 
then the muflfted echoes died away, and the wander- 
ers turned aside to wonder wlien the hour would 
come that should wrap them in cold suffocation and 
chill their senses into drowsy death. 

Lineal distance is not to be measured in moun- 
tain wanderings. After many days of devious jour- 
neying, the lieutenant knew that the warm fires of 
the post were glowing scarce fifty miles away. He 
knew, too, that somewhere among the rocks, per- 
haps scarce a hundred feet away, were the dim trails, 
the blazed trees, the remembered landmarks by 
which men had come and gone before, and which 
shortened distance and made intricacies plain. But 
to be lost in the mountains is to be dazed, bewil- 
dered, insane. Men lose the faculty of observation, 
and wander in an endless and hopeless round. They 
sit down in final despair, when only a ledge shuts 
out the sight of home, and the voices of friends 
might almost reach their ears. The lieutenant was 
lost. He knew it, and grimly bit his lips. The 
guide was lost ; and while he claimed familiarity 
with each shadowy glen, and old friendship with 
each cliff's imperturbable face, the leader knew that 



124 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

he also was wandering at random amid rocks and 
liills that had not known the presence of him or any 
man. With a contempt for unwarranted pretences 
that men do not cease to feel even in despair, he 
addressed the Mexican no word, as he himself qui- 
etly took the lead. The party rode on in silence. 
In the face of every man except the leader was the 
knowledge of a hopeless bewilderment amid scenes 
never known before save to the unclouded vision of 
the immortals. But when he spoke, he gave his ^ 
orders with the bluff distinctness of the parade- 
ground. For himself, he did not think he cared. 
He had in his heart that high courage which, regard- 
less of physical strength, is the result of early train- 
ing in the famil}^, the school, and the traditions of a 
courageous race. He was one of that throng of 
gladiators whose skill, rather than whose strength, 
the world is beginning to understand, and in whom 
is illustrated the contrast between him who saluted 
l^ero in the arena, and him whose weapon is given 
him first by his mother, to be sharpened afterwards 
by himself at school, at play, and in the first lessons 
of a life whose prizes are open to every man. Yet 
this young soldier was not a remarkable man. He 
was only one of those who are carving out the desti- 
nies of a brilliant century through the difficulties of 
daily life. He knew that beyond those wild and 
rugged fiistnesses there was a river, an open coun- 
try, a plain, or some change that could afford view 
and hope ; and as he rode silently at the head of his 
party, he fixed his eye upon some distant land-mark 
that might keep them from wandering in the end- 



JOE'S POCKET. 125 



less circle of bewildered men, and help them to the 
end iit last, whatever that end might be. 

So long as the snow melted in the morning sun, 
they need not thirst ; so long as the startled hare 
sprang up before them, they need not want for 
food ; and the wilderness-beleagured commander 
led his followers on. At night, in some sheltered 
spot, the blaze of cedar boughs threw its ruddy 
glare into the brooding darkness. The fox drew 
near to wonder at the illumination, and the green 
light of the deer's bright eye flashed upon them 
from beyond the lire-lit circle. It was a wilder- 
ness where even the Indian seemed never to have 
come, and, in the tameness of astonishment, the 
beasts came near to them in seeming friendship. 

Then the soldier would sometimes leave his com- 
panions in the silence of slumber or thought, and 
wander away among the rocks and shadows. He 
did not go to brood and think alone. Perhaps it 
seemed to him, as it has seemed to many men ere 
now, that He whose hand had reared these pinna- 
cles drew near and filled with an unseen presence 
the sinless solitudes of the primeval and uncursed 
world. In helplessness, almost in despair, he may 
have looked upward through the mighty shadows to 
the sailing clouds and the calm stars. It is in the 
desert, amid vast solitudes and awful silences, that 
men may reach upward and almost touch the 
mighty hand. There are hours when no man is 
an atheist. 

And one night, as he walked in the gloom, he 
looked back and saw the silent group painted in 



126 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

striking colors by tlie ruddy light of that camp- 
fire which has seemed so often to tlie wanderer the 
light of home. A faint glow went before him into 
the darkness, and he fancied he dimly saw the out- 
line of a path. A little further, and that was again 
lost ; but he thought he perceived the faint odor of 
new-delved earth. Here and there a huge bowlder 
lay in his way, and as he touched it with his hand 
he could feel the slimy dampness of the surface 
that had lately lain in the earth of the hillside. 
Then he sat down upon the dry, dead pine-fringes, 
beneath an overhanging rock. Here was almost a 
link with the world. The morning would be begun 
with a new hope. A blessed some-one had been 
here before him, and he longed for light to see 
those human signs again, and follow them to 
wherever they niight lead. He had almost started- 
up to return to the fire again, when a strange sound 
fell upon his ear, and he stopped to listen. It was 
as a whirlwind heard from far. "It is the wind 
in the pines," he said to himself, and still listened 
as it drew nearer and nearer. Then a crackling 
sound mingled with the roar, and presently a great 
white bulk in the darkness leaped with a dull 
sound into the valley before him, and spread itself 
out upon the ground. Then another fell with a 
mighty crash ahnost at his feet, and he crept still 
nearer to the protecting rock. And while the great 
roar gathered in sound, and the foaming white sea 
came down like a relentless doom, the pallid face 
of the one frail mortal who stood in its way was 
turned aside, and as the white pall settled at the 



JOE'S POCKET. 127 



mountain's base, its cold folds shut in a figure poor 
and weak as compared witli tlie mighty force that 
overwhelmed it, but grander, indeed, than all, in 
capacity for a heroic struggle with death. 

In the morning, the soldiers and guide looked 
upon a great heap of snow, whose outer edge 
reached nearly to their camp-fire. "He is dead," 
said they, as they counselled among themselves. 
At noon they started back toward home. . . Was 
it indeed backward ? The eagles that watched their 
wanderings, and the gray wolves who gnawed their 
bones, will never tell. 

But he was not dead. The hollow rock was 
upon one side and the white wall of snow upon the 
other, and between Uiy his bed of dry pine-leaves, 
prepared for him by the angel of the winds, and 
softened by unseen liands. As the hours passed 
by, a dim blue light came through to him, and 
showed him the crystal outline of his hopeless 
house. He called, and the dull sound he heard 
mocked his own voice. But he did not lack air ; 
neither was he wanting in hope and energy. He 
could touch the mossy rock, and the earth ; and 
they seemed of the world, and friendh\ He was 
hungry, and the blue-white light smote upon his 
eyes and seemed to benumb his faculties. As he 
reflected, he would have given all his knowledge 
of geography — nay, all he knew beside — for the 
topography of the snowy world in which he was 
buried, so that he might tell upon which side the 
white barrier was thinnest. 

Then, as the 'first gnawing and weakness of hun- 



128 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



ger came upon liim, he began to delve. He knew 
that strength would fail in experiment, and that 
where he begun he must continue. As his fingers 
grew numb and stiff in his work, he wished he 
might barter all his hopes of ease and affluence for 
a despised spade. Yet his prison was not cold. 
The snow was a thousand blankets, and the radi- 
ating heat of the earth became a steam. 

After many hours, the opaline mass grew slowly 
dark again, and he crawled backwards through his 
narrow tunnel, to chafe and warm his hands, and 
rest. Rest came with sleep. "He giveth his be- 
loved sleep,'' and the angels must have looked 
kindiy upon the place where, beneath his spotless 
tapestry, one lonely pilgrim lay, like a play-wearied 
child, with his head upon his arm in tired slumber. 

When he awoke, he knew from his \vatcli that he 
liad slept five hours. He was frightened to think 
how the time was passing and he not saved. Hun- 
ger waits not upon effort, and already the enemy 
was insidiously gnawing. But he did not imme- 
diately set to work again. On the contrary, he did 
something that, to the uninitiated, would seem the 
very opposite. He was not utterly without a solace 
and comforter, and this comforter is one that has 
accompanied men in much toil and weariness in this 
world. It comes to every camp-fire, and stills like 
a balm the cry of hunger and cold. It was a brown 
pipe. He leaned against the rock, and the incense 
of the Virginia weed ascended and was absorbed in 
the rouf of virgin snow. After a while, calmness 
came to him, and he again crept into the narrow 



JOE'S POCKET. 129 



tunnel lie had begun. Lying prone, lie pressed the 
snow beneath him, creeping slowly forward. Wearily 
the hours passed. Sixty feet — seventy — ninety — 
a hundred. He looked backward through the long 
passage, and thought of the unknown distance yet 
to go, and his strong heart almost failed him. A 
hundred and ten — twenty. His head swam, and 
the blood from his numb fingers stained the snow. 
Ten feet more, and his hands were like sensitive 
sticks, and almost refused tlieir office. Then he 
crept slowly back, and crawling to his couch, tried 
to chafe his stiffened fingers into something like life 
and feeling. Darkness had come again, and he lay 
there, not knowing if lie slept, or if indeed he saw 
visions of another country, with orchards in white 
bloom, and paths beside rivers, and shining spires 
of fair cities above the mists of morning. Afterward 
his raw hands were swollen until at sight of them 
he almost smiled ; yet he crept into the long tunnel 
again, and, with pain at every stroke, worked at his 
task for life. A huge bowlder intervened, and with 
infinite pains he delved around it. The slow hours 
passed, and he was still another hundred feet nearer 
the far-off world. He ate the snow from thirst, and 
the thirst grew as he ate, and his throat was sore 
and swollen. He was chilled, and drowsiness nearly 
overpowered him. He was afraid to sleep, for he 
dimly knew that sleep was death. He was weary 
with a languor he had never felt before, and the nar- 
row backward track seemed too long to be traversed 
again. Weariness had overcome hunger, and all 
feelings had given place to utter exhaustion. And 
9 



130 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

still with weary strokes lie plied liis task. He knew 
that light must soon come, or death. He could not 
waste strength in crawling back to his bed. He 
could not wind his watch with his numb fingers, and 
the long hours passed uncounted; and still, with 
that dogged energy with which strong men fight 
death, he delved on, with movements so slow and 
tired that with remaining consciousness he almost 
doubted if he were not asleep. Three hundred feet, 
— and when morning came again and shone dimly 
through the snow, he hardly noticed, and did not 
care, that, white and strong, it lit with the radi- 
ance of spring the confines of his living grave. 

The March sunshine lights up the narrow valley 
with a blithesome glitter, that seems brighter by con- 
trast with the lingering snow upon the higher hills. 
The air is full of the balm and sweetness of the 
southern mountain ranges, and upon every hand are 
the evidences of that strange mingling of perennial 
spring and eternal cold which in more level coun- 
tries seems a fable. 

Strewn along the edges of a noisy stream are four 
or five log houses. Spots of brown earth dot the 
hillside ; the uprooted bowlders have tumbled into 
the torrent, and on every hand are evidences of the 
spade and the pick. The little settlement, in the 
very heart of the southern Sierras, is very new, and 
as yet unheard of in the world of stocks and trade. 
Everything necessary to the rude life of the place is 
carried thither upon the backs of donkeys, and costs 
almost its weight in the precious dust — of " which 



JOE'S POCKET. 131 



there is some considerable quantity hidden in these 
cabins. All around lie the peaks and valleys of an 
unknown wilderness, through which even the miner 
has hardly yet w\andered. You might pass and re- 
pass many times within a few hundred yards of 
Biggs' s gulch, and not suspect its existence. Tlic 
veritable Biggs himself, accompanied by his daugh- 
ter, passed around the spur and near the new snow- 
bank, about nine o'clock in the morning, on this 
tenth day of March. It was Sunday, and he carried 
nothing but a stick. Their errand was not this time 
the perpetual gold, but wild flowers for her and 
trout for him. But, after all, there was something 
in their Sunday's pleasure unsuspected by them. 
As they passed by, the old man stopped to look at 
the huge heap that had come so suddenly and so 
late, and whose outer crust was fast melting under 
the rays of the valley sun. As they stood there, his 
eyes, ever accustomed to notice the small things of 
nature, discovered a curious cavity in the snow, fast 
widening in the sun. He stooped to obtain a better 
view. "Sutliin inside begun that hole, sis, an' the 
meltin' is a finishin' of it," he said, and inserted his 
fishing- stick. At the very entrance, it touched some- 
thing soft. Then he broke away the crust, and 
there, before their astonished eyes, lay a blue-clad 
figure, the face downward and resting upon an out- 
stretched arm. 

It were useless to note the ejaculations of aston- 
ishment, some of which had a strong though un- 
meant touch of irreverence, as the mountaineer drew 
forth into the sunlight the limp figure, and the 



132 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

bright rajs kissed the pallid and suifering face of the 
soldier who had fought with death and been almost 
conquered. It would have been entirely in order if 
the girl had screamed or swooned. She did neither, 
but her face took at once a Hush and a pallor. 
"Wait a minnit," shouted the old man, somewhat 
flurried, and started off as fast as his elderly limbs 
would carry him. As he passed around the spur, 
the girl stood looking at the unconscious form, and 
her face showed a curious mingling of emotions. 
Then her eye caught sight of one bleeding, swollen 
hand, and as she knelt and lifted it she began to 
cry. Then she took the other; and it would seem 
that she thought to warm and heal them by contact 
with her fresh, wet cheek. As the moments passed, 
she drew nearer and nearer to him. She touched 
his cheek with hers, and smoothed back the damp 
hair. Then she suddenly left him, and ran to the 
bank round which her father had disappeared, and 
looked up toward the village, l^o one was coming. 
She glanced apj^rehensively around; not even a bird 
was near. Then, as if fearful of the loss of time, 
she darted back to where he lay, and, kneeling, lifted 
his shoulders in her arms, and pressed his head to 
her bosom as a mother would press her little child. 
Even as the tears fell down upon his face, a rosiness 
of pity and love overspread her own. "^y di m^,'' 
she said, "poortheeng, poor theeng." But in the 
midst of her caresses and lamentations, the soldier 
opened his eyes. He said long afterwards that he 
would have done so had he really been, as she 
thought him, dead. She just laid him down again, 



JOE'S POCKET. 133 



and sat apart in shame, daring neither to look at 
him nor leave him. Her father came with his com- 
panions, and as they carried him to the cabin the 
girl followed far behind — glad as a guardian angel 
for the saving of a soul, ashamed as Eve at the 
voice in the garden. 

It is strange, indeed, how near the brink of the 
great gulf a man may go, and yet return. An hour 
more in tlie snow-bank, and tlie soldier had never 
seen the sunlight again. As it was, the sluggish 
blood was slow enough to resume its flow through 
chilled and stiffened veins. But as he lay beside 
the one window in Joe's cabin and looked out upon 
the scenes of a new life, it seemed as though he did 
not much care. The distant post, guard-mount and 
dress parade, the midnight tour on the guard-line, 
his loved profession, and the charm and glitter of 
arms, all seemed to be far-away and almost forgotten 
things. Day by day his strength came slowly back, 
and he was indifferent as to whether his friends 
knew of his fate or only guessed and wondered. He 
was enjoying the only absolute and unquestioned 
dominion a man ever exercises in this democratic 
land — the dominion of the convalescent. He 
seemed almost to have forgotten his ladj^ mother ; 
and the mild terrors of an infringement of the Dra- 
conian statutes regarding respectable connections no 
longer troubled liim. Joe Biggs went his daily way 
to his digging, and the girl, who sat demurely at the 
little fire and occupied herself with the endless 
stitching of her sex, was his physician, if he had 
anv. Sometimes, as he watched her, there was the 



134 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

old merry twinkle in liis eve, and a slj smile dawned 
in liis face. Perhaps lie w^as thinking of how very 
cunningly he had found her again, or of the great 
ridiculousness of the current supposition that he 
came near dying in the snow-bank. 

But he talked to her, and was rewarded by the 
interest with which she listened to the strange story 
he told her. And then he feigned to sulk, by no 
means adding to his general agreeableness thereby, 
and grew tyrannical, and declared that unless she 
came near, nay, even sat upon the bed-side, he 
would probably never recover. Once, as she sat 
there, he told her of his far-away home, and of his 
mother and sisters; and then he entered more largely 
into the subject, and described, even more clearly 
than her father had done, the characteristics of the 
two great races from which she had distantly, and 
very fortunately, come. 

Upon bright days of the advancing spring, he 
walked about the little mountain hamlet that had as 
yet scarce so much as a fortuitous name, and was 
apparently much interested in the life of the mines. 
He went with the girl to his last camp, and they two 
looked with curious eyes at the camp-fire ashes that 
lay there leached and sodden, with a broken knife 
and a lost bayonet as mementos of the bewildered 
wanderers who had last been there. And they stood 
together at the shelving rock, and her face flushed, 
and her black eyes sparkled with pitying tears, as 
he told her of his days and nights in the snow. ISTo 
wonder that he became to her the central object of 
all thoughts, and the great concern and care of her 



JOE'S POCKET. 135 



life. For slie still cliose to believe lie was not 
strong, and made him savory dishes of mountain 
quails, and demurely cautioned him about his vari- 
ous imprudences. She believed she knew men, and 
their ways and doings. She had had the care of one, 
and a wayward one, for some years. As for Lieu- 
tenant Thurston, and his masculine submissiveness 
to all this tyranny, he was conscious of but one 
defined and positive feeling in regard to it : he had 
made up his mind that an indefinite continuance of 
it would suit him precisely. 

One day he followed Joe to his hole in the hill- 
side, and they sat together upon a log at the mouth 
of the shaft. 

''My friend," said he, "I must go back to the 
post; will you lend me that mule ? " It really was a 
diminutive donkey of which he spoke. 

"Well, now, — slio," said Joe, "ye needn't 
hurry. Besides, ye can't find the way 'thout I go, 
an' I ain't got time.'' 

"I'll find a guide, Mr. Biggs. Will you lend me 
the mule ? " 

" Y-e-s, of course," said Joe; "but," he added, 
with a twinkle in his eye, " how '11 I git the animal 
ag'in ? " 

"I'll bring it to you." 

" An' come ag'in yerself ? " 

"Certainly." 

The elder man looked at the younger keenly and 
inquiringly. He was peculiar in the respect that all 
his kind are, and cared no whit for any man's dig- 
nity. So, between two who by this time understood 



136 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

eacli other tiioroiiglily, the conversation was con- 
tinued. 

"What would jou come back here for I You don't 
belong to this kind." 

"I do not belong to any kind; and," desper- 
ately, "I would come back for your daughter." 

" Don't ye do it 'nless ye come fair an' square, — 
I advise ye, now. I like ye, young man ; I saved 
yer life, an' I'd do it ag'in. But if ye ever use what 
I done for you for anything as isn't square an' fair 
between my folks and yourn, it 'ud a been better for 
ye never to a come out'n the snow-pile." 

"I tell you I will come again, and that I am an 
honest man, and a grateful one. What I mean is 
plainly what I say," — and he rose to go away. 

" Hold on, youngster !" cried Joe ; "I knowed it, 
but I wanted to make sartin'. Bless ye, I ain't 
blind. Does she know it, — have you said anything 
to her?" he continued, in a lower voice. 

"Well, — yes ; I think I have said too much. I 
am afraid there is one thing that I have not suffi- 
ciently thought of. If I should do precisely as I 
wish, it would be very imprudent. I~~I have not 
much money." 

"Come with me; I want to show ye suthin' 
purty," and Biggs laid hold of tlie young man's 
sleeve, and started back toward the cabin. When 
there, he lighted the greas}^ implement contrived 
to do duty as a lamp, and crept under the rude 
bedstead. "Come on!" he cried from unknown 
depths ; and the soldier went down after him and 
found himself in a kind of cellar, the earthen roof of 



JOE'S POCKET. 137 



which was supported by cedar beams, as mines are, 
— for tlio cabin had no floor but eartli. ''This is 
whar I lived afore I built the cabin on top,'' said 
the old man. "I've been poor all mj life, an' now 
the luck has turned at last. This is whar I keep the 
stuff." Then he threw aside sundry old blankets, 
gunny-sacks, and dried skins, and disclosed three or 
four large glass jars, such as are used in packing 
relishes, and some small sacks made of canvas. He 
took up a quart bottle, and as he held it to the 
smoking light the dull yellow gleam of the metal 
showed it to be full. Then he lifted another, which 
held the same yellow hoard. Thej^ were all full. 
There, before his eyes, the soldier saw many thou- 
sands of dollars. The old man sat down upon a 
broken box, and eyed his treasures, and talked. 
He told how he had run away from whiskey and a 
cross woman, and, coming to this spot, had found 
"signs." He had made a dug-out, and killed game 
for food, and opened a drift into the hill-side. He 
said he had "sloshed around" the bottom of the 
hill a good while before he had concluded to really 
go at it. He had found pockets before, and "kinder 
knowed " there was one somewhere about here. He 
had a hard time, but Anally " struck it rich," and at 
last came upon the pocket he had been looking for 
all his life. He was glad he had come ; for, he 
argued, what good would it do a man "to hev a 
million, an' that 'ar woman too?" When his luck 
came, he was afraid, as men often are under such 
circumstances, and for a month did not even tell his 
daughter. Day after day he took out the veined 



138 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

and crumbling rock, sometimes almost pure gold. 
He cruslied it in a rude mortar, and subjected it to 
the clumsy chemistry of the mountains, witli instru- 
ments of his own contriving, and at night. Then 
he needed help, and took his daughter into the 
somewhat miserly secret. Finally he induced some 
wandering miners to settle in his neighborhood, for 
the sake of company and jn-otection. They had all 
been successful to some extent, but none of them 
could do more than guess at the old man's success, 
with the peculiar miner's intuition in respect to such 
things. In the course of his conversation in the 
cellar, he made the startling announcement that he 
had twice been back to the jDost, and that it was 
only sixty miles away by his trail. When asked 
what he had gone there for, he answered, "quick- 
silver" and "suthin' to wear," and told how his 
daughter had remained "cached" in the mountains 
until his return. As he told this story, with evi- 
dences of its truthfulness all around him, the soldier 
wondered if this was not Aladdin, and if he were 
not dreaming. "N^ow, youngster," said the miner, 
in conclusion, "I've told ye this, so'st the arrange- 
ment needn't be one-sided. I tell it to ye, 'cause I 
think ye're honest. The pocket's petered, an' ain't 
wuth much now; but my lead's wuth more than I'm 
just now williif to lay myself out on. I'm gettin' 
old, an' am goin' to quit." 

They climbed the ladder and emerged again into 
the outer air. As they stood in the sunlight, it 
seemed more than ever a dream. 

But to the old frontiersman must necessarily 



JOE'S POCKET. 139 



come some relief after such earnest discourse. He 
tunied away at tlie door, and as he departed, h)oked 
back and said, " Ye kin hev the jackass, an' be 
d d to ye. I only said it to try ye." 

The niglit passed to the lieutenant as a waking 
dream. He had lighted upon a wonder, and through 
the moonlit hours he tossed, questioning if morning 
would find all those jars of yellow metal real things. 
The wealth of this poor girl of the mountains 
exceeded his mother's dreams of monied respecta- 
bility, — though he did that lady the strict justice to 
remember that she required of her ideals a little 
more than mere money. Aside from all this, was 
he willing to forego all there was for him in tlie 
far-off world, for this sweet cliild of the desert, 
and to accept her, and her alone, and forever, as 
just and full compensation for all there might be 
besides'^ A week ago he had deliberately concluded 
upon his course, and was surprised to find himself 
questioning now. 

In the morning, a donkey stood at the door, 
accompanied by a companion. He was assured 
that the miner who was to go with him knew the 
way; and as he started, the girl stood in the door- 
way, shading her eyes with her little brown hand, 
with pleasure and regret striving for the mastery in 
her face. She knew he would return. He had 
told her that, and she believed him. In truth, slie 
did not see why he should not. A young woman 
cannot be expected to understand the mysteries of 
a life she has never known or even dreamed of. 

They met the old man in the path. He was 



140 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

wiser, and had not much to saj; but as tliey passed 
by, he shouted after them : ''Bring me some quick- 
silver when joii come." He had never been very 
]'omantic, even in his own affairs of the heart. It 
was not surprising that lie should insist upon look- 
ing upon this as mere matter of fact. Old Joe was 
a man of very hard sense, after all. 

For two days they plodded steadily on, the 
returning wanderer paying little heed to the road, 
and absorbed in his own thoughts, following in the 
trail of his leader. On the third day they caught 
sight of the floating banner on the slender flag-staff, 
idly flaunting its glories to the green world of 
silence and sunshine. The sight gave him a chok- 
ing sensation. When he alighted at his quarters, 
they were inhabited by another ; and the wliole gar- 
rison, from the commandant down, and including 
that class with whom he had always been most pop- 
ular, the ladies, looked at him as at one risen from 
the dead. He briefly told them his story, saying 
not a word of the personality of his rescuers. He 
learned then that his companions had not returned. 
But he had grown accustomed to startling things, 
and was not surprised. He had been dropped from 
the rolls, and his record closed as one dead. Even 
that failed to shock him now. He confessed to him- 
self, with some surprise, that he wished above all 
things to get back to Old Joe's little cabin, and see 
that little uncultured womanly woman, who, he had 
almost come to believe, was the one angel of the 
universe. 

The same night the commandant received a com- 



JOE'S POCKET. ■ 141 



munication, addressed through him to the Secretary 
of War, tendering the unconditional resignation of 
First Lieutenant Thurston, Third Cavalry; and at 
the end was the startling declaration that, after so 
long an absence, he had returned to his post only to 
perform the duty necessary to a soldier's honor. 

That night he locked his door and read his let- 
ters. Tiiere were several from his mother, and two 
or three from female friends who inquired when he 
intended to pay tlie long-deferred visit to his liome. 
He read the delicate lines, and the faint perfume of 
old association touched his senses. But he laid 
them upon the fire, and moodily watched them turn 
to ashes. Perhaps they were never answered. 

Four slow weeks went by, and the communica- 
tion came tliat ended his military career forever. 
He carried it to his quarters, and locked himself in, 
and tried to realize his situation. He had been lost 
in the mountains ; he had looked death, slow and 
cold, steadily in the face. In a few weeks he had 
tasted nearly all there is in life's cup, the bitter and 
the sweet. But through it all, there was no moment 
more full of regret than this. 

Then, at the trader's store, there was the busy 
outfitting of a train of mules with all things neces- 
sary to a mountain life ; and clad in homely gray, 
with slouched hat and spurred heel, citizen Thurs- 
ton directed the enterprise. It began to be said 
among his brethren that after all Thurston was a 
shrewd fellow, and had undoubtedly found among 
the mountains something rich. But to the last he 
told no tales ; and as the tinkling procession passed 



142 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

tlie house known as ''Joe's cabin," the blue-cUid 
throng looked tlieir hist npon a man who had once 
been one of them, but now passed out of their world 
forever. 

There is a certain town on the far Pacilic coast 
which has grown up of late years with the strange 
growth which is born of traffic in an opening mining 
country, and which agricultural communities never 
know. There is an elegant mansion there, and its 
proprietor is reputed very wealthy. Within are 
luxurious carpets, and shining wood, and marble, 
and plate glass. Fruits ripen in the yard, and rare 
flowers bloom on the terrace. He is a man, too, not 
alone of luxurious tastes, but of intelligence and 
public spirit. But he is mostly envied because of 
his wife. The curious people who have frequently 
scrutinized her elegant attire have also noticed that 
she speaks English with a little lisp, and apparently 
regards her husband in the light of a demigod. But 
they little know how the lady has changed under the 
tireless lessons of love, or by what slow processes the 
mountain nymph became at last the woman as cul- 
tured as she was always beautiful. And the man 
wdio sometimes looks thoughtfully at the old sword 
and crimson scarf that hang, somewduit out of place, 
over the mantlepiece, himself scarcely realizes how^ 
much he has accomplished, and liow^ far-away and 
valueless is that respectability wdiich comes by birth, 
as compared with that which, by faithfulness and 
honor, and sometimes through danger and suffering, 
a man may w4n for himself. 



VII. 
-NEW MEXICAJN^ OOMMOiSr LIFE. 

THERE is a country far to the southwest in 
wliich everything is new, crude, and undevel- 
oped, wliere the evidences of enterprise and tlie set- 
tlements of white men are few, but which is the seat 
of an ancient and Christian civilization, and whose 
capital is the oldest town in America but one. 

Several centuries have elapsed since the Spanish 
tongue and Catholic faith came together to Xew 
Mexico. They antedate the settlement of James- 
town and the romance of Pocahontas. The then 
mighty Spanish power had founded a government 
here before the city of New Amsterdam had passed 
from the hands of its Dutch founders. The roads 
and mountain passes, traversed with such precaution 
now, were the routes of extensive trade long before 
the first wagon-road had been made across the Alle- 
ghanies. When the Delawares and Hurons were 
still engaged in their desperate attempt to hold 
their ancient possessions against the aggressions of 
the white men, the aborigines of this country had 
been converted to slavery and Christianity, always 
excepting those implacable and unconquerable tribes 
whose hands are against every man, and who were 
then, as they are now, the scourges of advancing 
civilization. There are churches here in wliich the 

14.3 



144 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

disciples of the sword luid the cross said mass more 
tlian two hundred years ago, and mines whose shafts 
liave been ck)sed almost three centuries. 

Interesting as are the present aspects of this 
strangest of all the countries lying within the 
shadow of the American flag, the !New Mexico of 
the past would be still more curious could we but 
read the story that is everywhere written in unde- 
cipherable ruin. The very names of the ancient 
towns, whose walls are now grass-grown ridges of 
earth, have been forgotten w^th their inhabitants. 
Almost the last vestige of the civilization of con- 
quest is gone. All that the Mexican now knows he 
could easily liave learned since the country came 
under the control of the United States, and in the 
comparatively short time during which American 
enterprise has had a foothold. Everywhere, even 
in places so wild and inaccessible that they will be 
among the last reclaimed, there are dim signs of a 
curious past which has gone without monuments 
and without a history. 

The great feature of the country geographically is 
mountains — nothing but mountains ; not the pictur- 
esque and tree-clad hills of the East, but bold and 
bare and brown, and piled peak upon peak, with the 
high plateaux lying hidden between for hundreds 
of silent and desolate miles. Here and there is a 
spring, and sometimes a ragged cluster of huts 
beside a few fertile acres. But on every hand the 
yellow and rugged 2:)eaks cut a frowning outline 
against a sky, the bluest and fairest in the world. 
These mountains are, however, the repositories of 



.V^T]^ 3IEXICAN COMMOJV LIFE. U5 

immense and varied supplies of mineral wealth, 
mostly undeveloped, and probably undiscovered. 
And they are not without inhabitants, for they are 
the domain, the inaccessible and chosen home, of the 
Apache. None but the Apache knows them, and 
none but he would be able to find sustenance there. 

Tlie centres of life and trade in the country are 
the small towns in the great valley of the Rio Grande, 
for miles along whose sandy and insect-haunted 
stream continuous villages extend. There are also 
many settlements under the shadow and protection 
of the military posts. Places most remote and dan- 
gerous are naturally the location of the military ; 
and it is curious to note how soon a small settle- 
ment will grow up among the mountains or beside 
some tepid stream under the auspices of armed pro- 
tection. 

It is a land where nature in all her forms seems 
to delight in coarseness and ruggedness. Every 
shrub is thorny, and every undeveloped twig has a 
horny and needle-like point. The flowers are few 
and addicted to a universal yellow color, and trees 
there are none save those that grow sparsely on the 
banks of the streams, or stand dwarfed and crooked 
on the cliifs. But there is an interminable wilder- 
ness of mezquit — a thorny and ugly shrub whose 
beans furnish a staple article of savage food, whose 
roots are fuel, and from whose tough branches are 
made the bows which in the hands of the Apache so 
often send an unexpected and noiseless death to the 
traveller. 

From topography, and discussion of resources 
v.) 



146 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 



and prospects, all of wliicli claim their share of inter- 
est for the future, and will be very carefully looked 
after and accurately described, we will turn to what 
is always a central point of interest in a strange 
land — the character and habits of its people. 

In the question of the annexation of the immense 
territory, a part of which included New Mexico, to 
the United States, there were no more uninterested 
people than the New Mexicans themselves. They 
are not of that class who of their ov/n accord long 
for freedom and sigh for the privilege of self-govern- 
ment. The difference between that rule that for so 
many years has been alternately a republic and an 
anarchy, and one whose great struggle for life was 
fought out almost unheard on these far shores, is 
one upon which the Mexican never speculates, and 
which it is doubtful if he ever perceived. To him, 
educated as he might be supposed to be by more 
than three centuries of residence in the new world, 
still cling all the peculiarities of the Latin race. 
Everything around him has changed. The power 
that sent his ancestors across the seas has long since 
sunk under that slow disease of which old monar- 
chies linger and die, or perj^etualh- slumber. The 
traditions of his country and his race are lost to 
him. His land has long since been invaded by Yan- 
kee dominion. He has seen the people who are 
here to-day and gone to-morrow — the weary and 
disheartened gold-hunter, and the adventurer of 
every name and class, — and they have smitten him 
with their vices and taught him none of their vir- 
tues. The alert and vivacious Saxon has established 



NEW 3IEXICAN C03nWX LIFE. 147 

himself at the corner of Qvery street in his cliiefest 
vilhiges ; has brought him into contact with a new 
language, which, however, he has not learned to 
speak ; has threatened him with new ideas ; has 
changed his ancient real and doubloon to paper 
promises prhited in green, and, withal, derides the 
religion of his fathers and is disposed to laugh at his 
saving ceremonies. But through all the Mexican 
clings unmoved to his religion, his language, and his 
social life. The plough with whicli he tediously 
prepares the soil is such as was used in the days of 
the patriarchs. His oxen are yoked with thongs bind- 
ing the straight piece of w^ood to the horns, as was 
done in Yirgil's time. He harvests his grain with 
a sickle of crooked iron, dull and toothless as that 
held by Ceres in a group of statuary. The wild hay 
upon the swale or mountain-side he is content to cut 
with a hoe, and carry to market u])on the back of a 
diminutive donkey. The irregular, squalid and 
straggling village in whicli he lives is ancient beyond 
memory, and in its crooked streets generations of 
his ancestors have lived and walked, and left it 
unchanged. The bells which swing and jangle on 
an iron bar upon his church gable are perhaps pious 
gifts of some dead and forgotten cardinal of a hun- 
dred years ago. His Spanish ancestor was a man 
remarkable for his highly cultivated qualities of con- 
servatism, jealousy, and love of dominion. His 
descendant is remarkable only for placidity. The 
supreme content with which the Mexican sits upon 
the sheep-skin in front of his door and w^atches the 
current of passing life, the satisfaction he takes in a 



148 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

life which has in it only the humblest lot and the 
hardest fare, is nowhere else to be found in nervous, 
restless, wandering America. 

Rain is, or was, an unusual phenomenon of this 
arid country; and yet the Mexican's crops seldom 
fail him. The region is checkered with innumerable 
ditches, which twist themselves around hills and 
traverse sandy valleys, and are bank-full of turbid 
water. His squalid little villages gain their only 
charn] from rivulets of water trickling everywhere, 
and his little farm glows wdtli a peculiar greenness 
amid the browns and grays that lie around it in 
mountain and rock and plain. He solved the prob- 
lem of irrigation a very long time ago, and did what 
the impatient Yankee would probably never have 
done. He is not an engineer any more than the 
beaver is one, and has been so far very successful 
without any admeasurement of gradients and curves, 
and without the use of transit or level; so that it 
has often been said, and more than half believed, 
that a Mexican can make water run up hill. With- 
out the issue of municipal bonds or the forming of 
any joint-stock companies, he seems to have caused 
these snow-born mountain streams to follow him 
into the heart of primeval barrenness, and has made 
the desolation to bloom as the rose. 

And yet his plow is his chief curiosity. Agri- 
culturally it is no better than the Zulu adze, or the 
squaw's incompetent hazel eradicator. It is just a 
pole, with a second one fastened at a slight angle 
across the end of it. One end of this shortened 
stick serves for an upright handle, and the other 



NEW MEXICAN C03IM0N LIFE. 149 

end, sharpened, is the plow. A single pig, depre- 
dating in a meadow, on a wet afternoon, will turn 
up more ground, and do it more thoroughly than a 
New Mexican farmer can in two days. The contrast 
between this Egyptian tool and the glittering and 
elaborate instrument used by the Mexican's neigh- 
bor, the Kansas farmer, is as great as that existing 
between the clepsydra with which the gentle Nero 
beguiled his leisure hours, and the modern eight- 
day calendar clock. And yet the Mexican is in all 
probability the more successful agriculturist of the 
two. He knows ; he deals with certainties. No 
farm journal will ever change his views as to soiling 
versus pasturage, fall plowing, the profit of wheat 
growing, Hereford and Shorthorn, or whether it 
pays to hoe potatoes. As to his plow, he is not so 
much to blame. All Spain uses the same model to 
this day. So do Cuba, Cliili, and Old Mexico. 

As might be inferred, the class which comes first 
and oftenest under the observation of the traveller 
is the common one of laborers and burro-drivers. 
But it is impossible that there should be no grada- 
tions in society among people of Spanish blood. 
Here and there through the country are pretentious 
houses, whose doors are closed to the common vil- 
lager, and whose Dons and Seiloras hold themselves 
aloof from common contamination. These are the 
thoroughbreds, who, amid these strange surround- 
ings, trace back a lineage which is supposed to have 
had its origin among the knights and ladies of Arra- 
gon and Castile. In this wilderness exclusiveness, 
what dreams of renewed Spanish splendor, what 



150 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

regret for departed power, are indulged in, none 
may know. But sometimes the necessities of life 
bring about some intercourse with the commandant 
of a neighboring post, or some young army officer 
gains admittance under cover of his uniform, and 
then the stories that reach the waiting military 
world are to the effect that family greatness, as 
exemplified in these instances, is a mj\\\ and a 
flimsy dream, and exclusiveness a cloak beneath 
which is concealed a kind of respectable poverty. 
Tessellated marble, the carved balustrade and classic 
fountain, colonnade and balcony, have all been left 
out of the reputed demi-palace in which the grandees 
are spending their exile. It is the same earthen 
floor, the same unreliable roof, the same chile-coii- 
carne^ the same frljoles^ the identical clammy 
cheese, that give to the villager his shelter, his fare, 
and his supreme content, through all his life. 

To dance and to smoke seem to be the two great 
objects of Mexican life. In the village, the sound of 
the festive guitar is always heard, and the dance is 
well-nigh continuous. IsTot alone in the evening, 
but at midday, beneath some shade, or in an open 
court-yard, the passer-by stops, dances his fill, and 
passes on. Males and females, on whatever errand 
bent, join in the dance without hesitation, and quite 
as a matter of course. It is a habit that has become 
chronic, — the first amusement a child learns, and 
the last manreuvre his decrepit legs are made to 
perform. 

Equally inveterate is the habit of constant and 
continuous smoking, and the corn-husk cigarette is 



NEW MEXICAN COMMON LIFE. 151 

the universal article. Men and women alike mingle 
smoke with eveiy employment. Senoritas employ 
the intervals of the fandango in making and lighting 
cigarras^ and the celerity with which the Mexican 
manufactures the small roll of corn-husk and 
tobacco, never once looking at it, and chattering 
and gesticulating all the time, is astonishing. 

The IN'ew Mexican village is a complete nonde- 
script. It has not its likeness among all the sordid 
villages under the palms, or the ice-huts of shores 
where shines the midnight sun. At the distance of 
a mile it has the a})pearance of an unburned brick- 
kiln. The sun-dried adobe is the universal building 
material, and tiiere is almost no diversity in plan, 
pattern, or style. Ko attempt is made at regularity 
in the streets, which are simply narrow and zig-zag 
alleys, intended only for donkey travel and the con- 
venience of the goats. The description of a Mexican 
town invented by some border humorist, describes 
them all: ''JSTine inches high, eighteen inches long, 
and a mile and a half wide." And this is really a 
description so far as appearances go. The luxury of 
a floor, of bedsteads and chairs, is almost entirely 
unknown. Wooden doors, stoves, and iron utensils 
are nearly so. Everj^thing is of the earth, earthy. 
Beds and benches are banks of earth against the 
wall. Fire-places are slender arches, in which the 
fuel is placed on end. Cooking is performed in 
earthenware, and the favorite and standard dish of 
beans is quietly and thoroughly stewed for two or 
three days in an earthen jug. 

In these villages, the sounds of industry heard 



152 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

everywhere else in Christendom are nnknown. 
Til ere are no shojDS, and everj man is his own car- 
penter, joiner, and shoemaker. Iron is the great 
necessity of civilization, yet here its use is scarcely 
known. The only wheeled vehicle the Mexican 
nses of his own choice is a cart in which there is not 
so much as a nail ; and this unique triumph of the 
endeavor to make the ugliest, heaviest, and most 
inconvenient of earthly vehicles, creeps with shriek- 
ing axles over the mountain roads, eternally oilless. 
The Mexican mode of life is almost entirely 
agricultural, and these villages are simply collections 
of people pertaining to lands that are tilled in com- 
mon. There is a personage who is complacently 
designated as El Indio^ constantly on the alert for 
spoil, and from whose incursions there is no escape 
save in union. Wealth here consists in a multitude 
of goats, together with a limited number of donkeys 
and oxen. In his use and treatment of these ani- 
mals, the native is as peculiar as he is in other 
respects. Everything pays tribute to his larder and 
is included in his resources, except those things in 
general use with the majority of mankind. Cows 
are seldom milked and goats always are, and even 
sometimes the small pigs go short of the mother's 
milk, for which, however, they cry as lustily as do 
infant swine the world over. Pigs, lean and un- 
happy, are fastened to a stake by a lariat, while the 
donkeys are confined in pens. Dogs, innumerable 
and ill-favored, swarm everywhere, and domestic 
fowls roost among the household utensils and lay 
eggs in convenient corners. Red pepper, the famous 



NEW MEXICAN C03I3I0N LIFE. 153 

chile Colorado^ the hottest sauce ever invented, is a 
standard dish, eaten bj everybody. The manu- 
facture of common soap seems not to be understood 
or attempted, and its place is supplied by a plant 
that requires no preparation for use, and that grows 
wild in the country. Wood for fuel is not cut, but 
dug, being the huge roots of the insignificant but 
universal mezquit. Butter is almost unknown, but 
cheese from goat's milk is a staple. There are 
dishes in the Mexican bill of fare of which the name 
conveys no idea, and which were never known 
among the gourmands and epicures. There is a 
beverage that is the yqyj concoction of Beelzebub 
himself, made from that gigantic herb called by us 
the century plant. Acrid as turpentine, fiery as 
proof-spirits, its effect is more like insanity than 
drunkenness, and its use adds nothing to the gen- 
eral agreeableness of the race that, even when 
sober, is the very opposite of ingenuous. 

What is a country in which the two articles 
leather and iron are not in general use? asks the 
political economist. Yet here the utility of both 
these articles in e very-day life is practically un- 
known. Chains, tires, straps, hinges, braces, every- 
thing that requires lightness, strength, and tough- 
ness, is made of raw-hide; and, applied to the 
Mexican's uses, it is nearly indestructible. A dozen 
mules will chew a long summer night through upon 
a single lariat, and leave it unscathed ; which, to 
one accustomed to examples of the perseverance of 
that sagacious animal in tasks of the kind, is suffi- 
cient testimony. The shoes of the Mexican, made 



154 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

of a thinner variety of the same material, always 
last until they share the fate of most articles of the 
kind in this country, and are stolen by tlie coyotes. 
Everything broken is mended with liide, or not 
mended at all, and without it the common operations 
of life could hardly be carried on. 

The ancient primitiveness of New Mexican life is 
more particularly disphiyed b}" the dress of the com- 
mon class than by any other one sign. Stockings 
and gloves are seldom seen, any more than they 
are among the peasantry of soutliern Europe. Gen- 
erally, neither sex is encumbered with mote than 
two distinct articles of clothing besides the head- 
dress, whicli last is with both sexes as elaborate as 
possible. The females wear a skirt and a single 
upper garment, in whicli, in maid and matron alike, 
at all times and places, is displayed a great vari- 
ety of arms, shoulders, and bosoms. But no one 
ever caught a man without \i\^ soonhrero. or a woman 
without the rehosa. The first-named is the most 
elaborate article of the hat kind, sometimes pro- 
fusely adorned with gold embroidery. A Mexi- 
can's hat is a matter of profound importance, as 
indicating his respectability. It costs four times 
as much as his whole wardrobe besides, and even 
more than the donkey he rides. Shabby as he may 
be in other respects, his Sunday hat should insure 
him the respect due to a well-dressed man. 

The rebo8a is a garment as old as Spanish civili- 
zation, once of costly lace, but now a shawl, more 
or less gay, and sometimes elaborate, in which, 
indoors and out, the Mexican woman covers 



NEW 3IEXICAX COMMON LIFE. 155 

her modest liead and hides her captivating face. 
Shoulders, arms and feet may be ])are, but all that 
can be seen of her countenance is one eye and the 
end of her nose. Peculiarly graceful, as the females 
of her race o^enerallv are, Ions: habit renders her 
especially adroit in the management of her head- 
dress. Eating, smoking, drinking, talking, this 
constant shawl never falls, never becomes disar- 
ranged, never gets blown away. If ever in this 
country the traveller espies in the distance a figure 
upon whose head is neither hat nor shawl, he may 
begin to study the means of defence ; for it is no 
friend, but an Apache. 

Leaving out of account the goat, which seems to 
be a peculiarly Spanish animal, all the beasts of the 
field are of small importance as compared with the 
hurra. These are very small, many of them not 
so large as the smallest pony, and many a cuff 
bestowed in lieu of forage from colthood up, has 
made him even more <liminutive than nature 
intended. He is a melancholy brute, much given 
to forlornness of countenance and leanness of flank. 
Appearances indicate that, with all his reverence 
for sacred things, the Mexican has forgotten that 
the burro carries upon his shoulders the sign of 
the cross, and once played a prominent part in the 
most memorable ecclesiastical procession in the his- 
tory of the church. He is tied in the street by 
having a blanket thrown over his eyes, and guided 
in his wanderings wdth his master by vigorous 
thwacks on either side of his patient head. He is 
loaded with everything that can be tied to him or 



156 FRONTIER ARJir SKETCHES. 

hung upon liim, and in such quantity that fre- 
quently all that can be seen of him are his four 
little feet, and those enormous ears that in all his 
kind have ever refused to be hidden, even by a 
lion's skin. He is the carrier of hay, of stones, 
of bales of goods, casks of water, firewood, and 
sometimes of a whole family of small children. 
His owner has a confidence in his powers of loco- 
motion that would honor an elephant. Burdened 
with humanity or merchandise, faithful of disposi- 
tion, frugal of habit, and tough of hide, the little 
slave toils through his hard life with an uncom- 
plaining patience that makes him the martyr of 
the brute creation. 

The small commercial transactions of the native 
remind one of the shrewd dealings of a schoolboy. 
Should the purchase of eggs become desirable, you 
must be coifitent to buy them two, three, or half a 
dozen at a time. He will expend an immense 
amount of eloquence in attempting to convince the 
purchaser that they are worth fifty cents per dozen, 
while all the time he is really anxious to take half 
that sum. Should milk be wanted, he will swear 
by all the saints that the yellow and unctuous fluid 
is the milk of a cow, and not that of the goat from 
whose udders it is yet warm. If it be fowls, the 
hoarse old master of the harem will be extolled as 
young, tender, and precisel}" the bird for Seiior's 
supper. Discovered in his small rascality, the var- 
let disarms resentment by a smile so bland and a 
shrug so expressive that you are convinced he 



NEW MEXICAN COMMON LIFE. 157 



means no harm in being an inveterate and incura- 
ble liar. 

The female of every race and tribe differs from 
the male by a greater diiference than is expressed 
by masculinity and femininity, and the New Mexi- 
can woman is in many respects more a woman and 
less a heathen than could be expected of her from 
her surroundings. Always neat in attire and cleanly 
in person and surroundings, comely and sometiuies 
handsome in face and iigure, always trying to look 
pretty, with a very weak side for flattery and admi- 
ration, coquettish in her ways and suave in her man- 
ners, tender and kind to those she loves, with a 
laugh or a tear always at hand, as have her sisters all 
the world over, she is in striking contrast with the 
sordidness of her daily life, the surly uselessness of 
her degenerated kindred, and the habits of the 
country in which she lives. 

And while all this is true, there follows it a truth 
which is in itself a problem for the socialist and the 
student of human nature. Stated as a proposition, 
any form of society not cemented by a peculiar and 
almost indescribable spirit of chastity is sure to fall. 
Virtue must be regarded, venerated, inherited, — 
taught by the schoolmaster, the priest, and the 
mother. Such is not the case here. Prostitution 
and adultery go unregarded and shameless. Faith- 
fulness to the marriage vow is not deemed essential, 
and the idea of absolute virtue seems not to be 
extant. The New Mexican women present the 
unusual spectacle of almost universally modest 
demeanor and gentle manners, fulfilling the ordi- 



158 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

nary duties of home and life in a manner far better 
tlian could be expected of them with their training 
and education, and vet without an idea of tlie mean- 
ing, as it is generally understood, of the word virtue. 
The fact is, so far as I ever heard, an undisputed 
one. It is undoubtedly a study worthy the attention 
of those who are given to social questions, and who 
have attained to advanced ideas upon free love, affin- 
ities, etc. The train of social debauchery passes by, 
and the grand result comes thundering after ; for a 
large proportion of the population is more or less 
aifected by that malady which is one of the direst 
strokes inliicted by the angel with the flaming sword 
who stands at the gate of the garden of forbidden 
pleasure. 

No one need go to Kome to acquire a knowledge 
of what Catholicism is at home. The seat of the 
papal government, with the old man of infallibility 
throned in its midst, is not more thoroughly Catho- 
lic than is Xew Mexico. The passion for saints, 
relics, images, candles, and processions is universal 
throughout the country. Nearly all the villages are 
named '^ Saint" somebody, and Jesuitism may be 
said to be the established rule. The worst social 
vices are coupled with the deepest regard for every- 
thing that tastes of saintship and sacredness. Every 
hamlet has its church, or a building that was erected 
for that purpose. Each churchyard is a Golgotha 
which in some instances has been dug over many 
times for the purpose of burying the dead within 
sacred precincts. Exhumed skulls and large bones 
— a cheerful sight for those whose friends have been 



NEW MEXICAN C0M3I0N LIFE. 15S) 



interred here — are piled in a corner, or within the 
railing that surrounds the grave of some occupant 
who has not jet been ousted from that limited free- 
hold to which the poorest of us are supposed to be 
entitled at last. 

Convenient appliances tV)r the doing of penance 
are included in nearly every sacerdotal outfit. There 
are crosses large enough for practical utility, which 
penitents are requested to carry far out among the 
hills and back to atone for some unwonted sin. 
There are whips and ropes' ends for much-needed 
flagellation, and sometimes barefoot pilgrimages are 
prescribed to be made through a country where it 
would be difficult to find a rood that is not thorny. 
Lighter sins are purged away by lying all night upon 
a gravestone — a thing at the bare idea of which the 
soul of the Mexican quakes within him — or some- 
times by bumping the head a great many times con- 
secutively upon the church steps. AVhether this 
last-named exercise is a mere form, or whether the 
saving thumps are given with faithfulness and vigor, 
manifestl}' depends upon the thickness of the skull 
and the thinness of the penitent's conscience. 

The Jiestas^ or sacred days, come so often and are 
observed so generally that the ill-natured remark 
has been frequently made that they were invented to 
avoid the necessity of work, and lay the blame for 
all consequent poverty upon the saints. The motley 
procession that parades the streets on these occa- 
sions, firing guns, yelling, and singing, behind a 
tawdry image of the Virgin that is usually arrayed 
in pink muslin, with a black mantilla and cotton 



1(J0 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

gloves, is one of the raggedest, noisiest, and most 
ludicrous performances ever called bj the name of 
religion. Yet this unique form of the Christian faith 
is not wanting in its consolations. There are no 
free-thinkers and sceptics here. Under its influence 
the Mexican becomes, if not very courageous in dan- 
ger, at least hopeful and resigned in death. Upon 
those occasions, unfortunately not infrequent in 
this country, when his companions flee in despera- 
tion from the Apache, still hoping to escape when 
there is no chance of life, he drops upon his knees 
and awaits his fate, calmly dying with a prayer upon 
his lips to that mother of Christ whose name is 
dearer than all others to the Catholic heart. x*s"ever- 
theless, this statement is a reminder that we should 
be thankful that the sturdy Protestant is apt upon 
such occasions to die fighting if necessary — running 
if possible. A course of conduct the opposite of the 
Mexican's has saved a great many lives in these 
lonely canons, and the desperate survivors of unre- 
corded skii-mishes are not impressed by the religious 
as])ect of the Mexican's case. 

The love of isolation, the contentment with the 
condition to which they were born, the desire to 
remain forever environed bv that chani2relessness 
that has sat brooding over his primitive woi-ld for 
centuries, which is the characteristic of the Spanish 
peasant in the old country, seems also to cling to 
the character of his descendants wherever they are 
scattered. Of all the homes of America this is 
the happiest ; of all her citizens this is the most 
satisfied. The land that is new to us is verv old to 



NEW MEXICAN C03IM0N LIFE. 161 



him, and all his straggling villages belong to another 
age and have remained to this. As he is ignorant, 
so is he careless of all things outside of his sierra- 
bounded horizon. He cannot be awakened. He 
refuses to submit to tliat pain which accompanies 
the parturition of an idea. He does not even under- 
stand that the skies are changing over his head, 
and that he or his chihlren will be called upon to 
take step with tlie march of a great people, or be 
left by the wayside forgetting and forgot. Time 
will bring about none of its revenges for him; a 
changed life none of its compensations. There is 
something in race, and a great deal in what we call 
"blood." There are five kinds of us whose traits 
and faces are known to every school-child. But 
it is a mistake that there are not six. The 
Spaniard and his children are apart from all the 
rest, for six hundred years changeless at home and 
abroad. The land that has come under his domin- 
ion, wherever it may lie, has been from the day of 
his conquest under a spell also. 

It is so with this. Even at this distance of time 
and space, with every vivid recollection blunted, it 
is easy to recall the old, familiar summer afternoon 
in Mexico. I remember how the seiloras sat with 
folded hands about the doors, and looked with one 
unveiled and furtive eye upon the passers. Ancient 
and parchment-faced crones chattered and smoked 
at the corners of the little dusty plaza, and impish 
boys played at noisy games in the quiet street. 
The cocks and hens sauntered in and out of their 
owner's houses with an air of satisfied ownership, 

n 



162 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

and venerable and bearded goats perambulated tlie 
crumbling garden walls. Unliappy pigs whined and 
pulled at their tethers, and kids furtively nibbled at 
the tail of a solemn old donkey who stood with 
closed eyes and hanging lip, asleep. There are 
rows of white tents, and moving figures, and curling 
blue smoke, and the distant laughter and careless 
song of soldiers. These are they who have come 
from far, whose lives are not the lives of peace, and 
who seem the invaders of a region that was ever 
before the land of dreams. I see the white tops of 
the Sierras gleam in the slant sunshine, and slowly 
the long shadows of afternoon creep over the scene, 
and finally there is nothing left in the gloom but the 
twinkle of the camp-fires, and the outline of the cold 
peaks against the fading purple of the sky. There 
is the red glow of open doorways at intervals far 
down the village street, but no sound save the tink- 
ling of a guitar, the faint laughter of the dancers, 
and thin and far the bleating of the flocks. All is 
the perfect peace of contented poverty. All is to- 
day, and there is no to-morrow. 

I wonder, as I recall such scenes, whether I shall 
live to see the day when these dry bones shall be 
stirred. The land is already touched by the farthest 
ripple of that wave which slowly creeps horizon- 
ward, burdened with life, energy, and change. 
There already is the camp of the advance guard 
who steadily widen the borders of that civilization 
which is destined to include within its boundaries a 
hundred millions of freemen. 



Vlll. 

''peg;' the story of a dog. 

GIT out'n hyar, Peg AVatkins ! Ef I coiiic3 
tliar, rir'— and there was a sound as of a 
broom lighting upon its brushy end, and the liandle 
thereof striking tlie outer wall with a vigorous 
thwack. 

''!N^ow, in the name of wonder, who can this 
much-berated female be?" asked the doctor, as he 
heard the words and their accompanying emphasis. 
The doctor was the latest arrival. He was strange 
to the i30st and all its surroundings, having only six 
weeks before entered into a solemn contract with 
the high and mighty Medical Director U.S. A. in the 
city of Philadelphia, to do duty as acting Assistant 
Surgeon at any post to which he might be ordered, 
and to receive regularly therefor the sum of one 
hundred and twenty-five dollars per month, quarters, 
and a ration. The doctor was not in delicate health, 
and did not pretend to think that the air of the 
frontier would be beneficial in restoring a constitu- 
tion shattered by hard work in his profession. This 
was what most of his kind had reported of them- 
selves, together with other details of extensive prac- 
tice and influential connections, and the regrets they 
felt at leaving it all at the demands of physical 
debility. The brusque sunburnt fellows he was 

163 



164 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

hereafter to associate with had known many acting 
assistant surgeons in their time, and were not to be 
imposed upon. A new doctor means to the officers 
of a frontier military j)ost a some one out of whom 
is at first to be fairly had a considerable amount of 
fun, and afterwards, if he should prove a good fel- 
low, a new companion, considerable hospital brandy, 
and the service for which €i doctor is supposed to 
exist. He is welcomed and treated accordingly, and 
with all these various ends in view. 

When the doctor had alighted from the ambu- 
lance which had been sent to bring him three days 
before, his appearance was as startling in these soli- 
tudes as though he had just escaped from another 
world — which, indeed, he in some sense had. He 
was dressed in a gray suit, wore neat brown gloves, 
and, to crown all, a tall white hat of the "plug" 
variety, deeply and solemnly bound with black. 
The air of Chestnut street and the Continental Hotel 
seemed to emanate from him, as he stood there 
looking through the inevitable spectacles at the 
curious place that was for an indefinite time to be 
his official residence. A group of young fellows, all 
clad in blue, and each wearing the emblem of some 
comfortable military grade upon his shoulder, saun- 
tered out to welcome him from the trader's store. 
"Here is Pills," said one. "Remark the tile," said 
a second. "Bad health — large practice," chimed 
a third, epitomizing the usual story. "Wish I was 
where he came from," sighed a fourth, "wherever 
it is." But they ceased to laugh as he came nearer, 
and greeted him with that solemn courtesy which 



PEG:' THE STORY OF A DOG. 165 



is the usual thing when the object of it has been 
expected, and when previous remarks have not been 
of a character to be considered entirely respectful. 
As these really kind-hearted fellows shook hands 
with "Pills," one by one, the prospect for a great 
amount of fun out of a greenhorn did not seem to 
brighten. The new doctor was a kind of blonde 
Nazarite, whose face, it seemed, had never known a 
razor. He was so tall that the men around him 
looked up into his open eyes, and felt for a consider- 
able time thereafter the impression of a hand tliat 
was anything but flaccid. " Bad health," remarked 
Thompson to his companions, shortly after, "bad 

health bed d." 

With the air of a man who did not think his sur- 
roundings very remarkable, the doctor sat oiling liis 
gun when the broom was thrown at Peg Watkins, as 
aforesaid. The voice and the missile he knew were 
tlie personal property of the quadroon — or a shade 
darker — who did the culinary offices of the mess. 
But having been there but three days, he believed 
he might not yet have seen all the female denizens 
of the post. So, with the remark mentioned, lie 
arose and went to the door, in expectation of seeing 
this creature, who had apparently been caught m 
flagrante delicto^ make a hasty exit from the rear of 
the premises. What he actually saw was an immense 
yellow-and-white dog, with bristles standing like the 
spines of a roach along her back, and her head 
turned aside with that curious pretence of looking 
the other way that angry canines are apt to practise, 
while the pendent lip, drawn away from her square 



166 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



jaws displayed to some antagonist at the kitchen 
door a glittering array of ivory. This was the female. 
The doctor laughed as he thought of it; — "Peg" 
was only a dog. 

But he was one of those men who are prone to 
have an extensive acquaintance among the hairy 
beasts who, in all ages and with all races, have chosen 
to be beaten, spurned, misunderstood, and murdered, 
as the humble friends and followers of man, rather 
than live in savage independence without him. As 
he watched her, with an amused expression upon his 
face, it doubtless seemed to him that the shaggy 
creature was one possessed of rather more than the 
ordinary amount of canine character. " Come here, 
Peg," he said, in rather a conversational tone, as he 
held out his hand. Peg was visibly disconcerted, 
and lowered her bristles and seemed astonished at 
hearing her name called in a tone of kindness. She 
crept humbly toward her new friend, and when she 
felt the touch of his hand fairly grovelled in the dust 
before him, and at last deprecatingly followed him 
into the house. For a long time she had been 
accustomed to be addressed with missiles and epi- 
thets, and driven away whenever her shaggy form 
appeared in a doorway, and had presumably stolen 
from the butcher and the waste-barrel whatever she 
had to eat. And through it all she had lain in the 
sally-port every night, watching and listening, the 
most vigilant sentinel of the command. She was 
an outcast, so entirely abandoned that it was only 
through inadvertence that she was permitted to live 
at all. As she crouched close beside the wall, with 



peg:' the story of a dog. 167 



forlorn countenance and haggard, watchful eye, it 
seemed, had any cared to notice, that she felt, with 
such a feeling as her human masters often lack, her 
utter ignominy and disgrace. N'ow, in less than two 
hours after her first acquaintance with him, she lay 
in the twilight at the doctor's doorway, with self- 
conscious importance, and disputed the entrance of 
the commandant himself. So are dogs — and men — 
wont to forget themselves upon a sudden change of 
fortune. 

Tliere is a road, a monotonous and desolate 
yellow line across the desert, which leads west- 
ward from the Rio Grande across the southern 
border of IS^ew Mexico. Tliere is many a long 
day's journey upon it in which there is no water, 
no shade, no house, no passing traveller — nothing. 
Over it have passed hundreds who never saw the 
end, and other liundreds who, if they did see it, 
never cared to return. Over plateaux where the 
tall cacti stand like ghosts, through canons Indian- 
haunted and lined with graves and crosses, the 
melancholy path stretches for hundreds of lone- 
some miles. Yet it does not want wayfarers. Here, 
through the summer, thousands of long-horned 
Texas cattle drag their gaunt limbs along on the 
journey to California. Here is the man whose des- 
tiny it is to wander from place to place through life 
unsatisfied, surrounded by his dozen white-haired 
and boggle-eyed urchins who seem to have been born 
by the roadside, and ever accompanied by a woman 
whose most serious troubles are cured by a pipe, 
and whose amazing fecunditv seems to be no bar 



168 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



to constant wandering. Sometimes, too, tliere are 
those wlio have a more definite purpose in their 
journejings, and who escape from the ties of family 
and the law, and the manifold difficulties of civiliza- 
tion and old associations. But to all there is the 
same fatuous certainty of something better beyond, 
the same proneness to underestimate the length and 
peril of the road and the hard facts that lie at the 
end. But it is one of the roads of destiny, and by 
it do southern Arkansas, Texas, and other of the 
southwestern states empty themselves of their more 
unstable population. 

Some months before the doctor's arrival at the 
post, several families of such had encamped at the 
spring, wdiose semi-circular disc of stone opened the 
tepid waters to the light a few hundred yards from 
the southern wall of the military enclosure. The 
circumstance was not an unusual one, and would 
have attracted no attention had not the party stayed 
so long and been possessed of unusual attractions. 
They w^anted an escort of soldiers, and waited for the 
return of a scouting party, so that troops might be 
spared them — provided some other excuse for not 
furnishing a guard did not meantime occur to the 
mind of the commandant. The men were well- 
dressed and independent, and the women were some 
of them comely and all of them quite exclusive. 
There was one tall girl, who attracted universal 
attention as well on account of her beauty as her 
demure reserve, who turned a cold eye upon Thomp- 
son himself, who in his day had been (the word of 
a soldier must be taken in this matter) a famous 



^PEG," THE STORY OF A DOG. 169 



woman-tamer. Tuck, the butcher's man — contract- 
or's agent, he designated himself — had, with cosmo- 
politan impudence, visited the new-comers camp the 
very first evening, and, contrary to all his expecta- 
tions, had fallen desperately in love with this young 
woman, and would have been quite willing to forego 
all other attractions and sacrifice himself for her 
sake, but when he ventured upon his first remark to 
her, she not only failed to reply, but turned to the 
man who seemed to be her father or her guardian 
and addressed to him a question which left Tuck in 
no uncertainty as to the rejection of his overtures. 
"Miss Margaret" the rest of them called her; and 
though thereafter Tuck called her ''stuck up," he 
nevertheless worshipped Miss Margaret from afar. 
She "didn't do nothin'," he said, and he noticed 
that when she was not reading a book whose bind- 
ing suggested a different kind of literature from that 
to which he was accustomed, she sat apart, with her 
uncommonly white hands in her lap, and looked, as 
he was pleased to imagine, very unhappy indeed. 
Had this most unconscionable ass but known that 
she was only angry, and that even her anger never 
touched Mh most distant neighborhood, he would 
have been sorely puzzled to know how to account 
for it. 

In the course of a few days it began to be sus- 
pected that the young lady held no relationship, 
unless a very distant one, with any of her party. The 
gallant and polite officers of the post were treated 
by her w^ith some consideration, and they acutely 
made this important discovery : Thompson averred 



170 FRONTIER AR31Y SKETCHES. 



tliat slie was a well-educated northern girl, who had 
gone to the south as a school-mistress, and had been 
jilted by some person to the said acute young officer 
entirely unknown. He acknowledged that she had 
not told hhn so, or in any way given him her confi- 
dence. But the Thompsons are all shrewd people. 
When asked if she intended making a residence in 
far-off California she said she did not know, and 
hinted that she did not care. The longer the party 
stayed the more imminent became the prospect of a 
sensation of some kind, on account of this fair- 
haired and blue- eyed young wonum, who seemed 
strangely out of place amid her surroundings, and 
who had captivated all hands down to the butcher's 
man. There had never passed through these regions 
a traveller upon this most desolate of roads, one 
whose footsteps were so dainty, whose skirts and 
collars were so preternaturally white, and who coiled 
her hair round her head with so much feminine 
skill. But she was "queer.'' She was, in a sense, 
homeless among her companions. Disregarding 
the supposed danger from prowling Apnches, she 
took long walks alone; and Tuck subsequently 
stated that he once saw her far down towards the 
canon, sitting upon a bowlder in the mooidight, 
apparently "thinkin'," and that beside her, alert 
and watchful, sat lier sole companion on such occa- 
sions, an ugly yellow dog, who had always seemed 
to have an especial dislike to the contractor's agent. 
One night, after tattoo, the man with whose fam- 
ily Miss Margaret seemed somehow connected came 
breathless to the commandant with the statement 



PEG," THE STORY OF A DOG. 171 



that she liad "gone walkin' '" early in the evening, 
and had not returned. Kor did slie ever return. 
The most accomplished trailer of the post failed to 
account for the manner of her taking off. After a 
day and a night of fruitless search, all further efforts 
werci ahandoned as useless, and thereafter the theme 
was avoided, as a horrible reminiscence whose every 
detail was sufficiently ex])ressed by the hated word, 
"Apaches." Thompson was most severely afflicted, 
and much exercised in the necessary concealment of 
a grief which this time was not one of that shrewd 
young officer's pretences. 

But had she indeed been captured by the Apa- 
ches i Had her reckless walks ended at last in 
sudden capture, and a fate worse than death ? Mari- 
ano, the scout, said not; and he knew. He declared 
that there had never been an Indian near the emi- 
grants' camp, nor between there and the canon, for 
three moons. Men would no doubt sometimes arrive 
at conclusions more nearly correct if they would 
study pro])abilities less and improbabilities more. 
If the commandant had been asked if there were 
any other means by which a young lady might be 
spirited away, he would have said unhesitatingly 
that there were not. He would have been, uncon- 
sciously all the time, thinking of the lost one as a 
woman. ^len, here as elsewhere, go where they 
list, and there is little thought of how or of when 
they may choose to return. 

Every Friday night, at an hour when the wilder- 
ness itself was asleep, there came rattling down the 
hill from the eastward a canvas-covered vehicle 



172 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

drawn by four vicious little mules. The officer of 
the day often heard the driver's coyote-bark, by 
means of which signal he and all his fellows are 
accustomed to arouse the sleepy officials of the 
desert post-offices as they approach. The sentinel, 
as he walked back and forth before the sally-port, 
watched it as the wheels ground over the gravel at 
the door, and heard the leathern sound of the falling 
mail bag. A sleepy word or two between the driver 
and the trader's clerk, the shutting of a door, the 
renewed grinding of wheels, and the overland stage 
had come and gone, so like a border phantom that 
it seemed doubtful, when the day came again, if 
such an institution existed. Sometimes there were 
passengers, but not often. Occasionally a desperate 
man, whose absolute necessities called him across a 
continent, loaded himself with weapons, and ran 
the gauntlet of discomfort and danger in the over- 
land. People wondered sometimes why or how the 
line was run at all. The doubt was hardly a perti- 
nent one. Some hundreds of thousands of dollars 
for a semi- weekly mail service, coupled with an 
agreement that the line must be prepared to carry 
passengers, will accomplish wonders. 

The man who reported Miss Margaret's taking-off 
to the commandant confessed that she was not in 
any way related to him or to his family; that she 
became connected with them in eastern Texas by 
having been a teacher in his neighborhood. She 
had money, he said, was "offish an' book-larned," 
had started with him for California because she had 
some concealed purpose in going, and added that 



PEG" THE STORY OF A DOG, 173 



" she never tuk to him or his family much, an' 
war a leetle quar in her ways." He prudently for- 
got to state that on the night of her departure she 
had told the whole partly distinctly that, in her 
opinion, they would never see California, and in 
terse and elegant terms expressed her opinion of 
the slowness of Texans in general, and of these in 
particular. He also failed to state that she had 
taken with her a travelling bag, but had left behind 
her an immense trunk, which, v.dth all its unknown 
finery, might be regarded as a legacy to his own not 
uncomely daughters. In fine. Miss Margaret's 
guardian lied ; and the day following left the post 
with all his belongings, going westward. 

More than a week after these events had occurred, 
and when the tender hearts of the gentlemen of the 
garrison had assumed that shade of subdued regret- 
fulness for Miss Margaret's fate, that is said to be 
characteristic of the sex, early one morning while 
Tuck was plying his vocation at the slaughter-pen, 
he was surprised by the apparition of an immense 
yellow-and-white mastiff, gaunt, tired, and almost 
starved, who came crouching toward him, urged by 
hunger, and mutely begging for the merest taste of 
the raw meat in which tlie churl was at work. He 
was greatly astonished, for he liad no great difficulty 
in recognizing Miss Margaret's surly guardian. He 
paused, with his bloody hands upon his hips, and as 
he looked, conceived a new hatred of the dog for 
her mistress' sake. '^Yo'u kin come back, kin you? 
Drat your ugly eyes !" and he threw a stone at her. 
The creature yelped, and limped away toward the 



174 FRONTIER AR2IY SKETCHES. 

sally-port, too tired and liiuigrj to even sliow lier 
teeth to that other cur who refused a bone to a 
starving dog. AYlien he saw her again, he said : 
''There goes that Peg." This was very biilliant 
irony on the part of Tuck, and he laughed a good 
deal to himself at the thought that the friendless 
dog should hereafter bear what he chose to con- 
sider the nickname of her lost mistress. Then, 
because the name of Miss Margaret^ s whilom pro- 
tector was understood to have been Watkins, the 
servant, with unconscious drollery peculiar to her 
kind, had called her "Peg Watkins" the evening 
she became the doctor's friend. 

As time passed, the doctor dissipated all the 
theories upon which the officers of the post had con- 
structed their conclusions as to what, as a contract 
doctor, he ought to be. He accommodated himself 
to surroundings that might well be considered 
curious, in an hour's time. He seemed to have 
travelled much, knew his fellow-men very well, 
and was cool in all emergencies. He was not 
afraid of sun or rain, was a keen hunter, and an 
excellent companion, and could tell stories like 
Othello. He seemed to know the miner of Cali- 
fornia, the ranchman of Texas, and spoke familiarly 
of Paris and Rome. In a word, he was very ftir 
from being as "green'' as his companions, having 
observed carefully the habits of many doctors, had 
expected. But there was something about the man 
that, after all, they could not quite understand. 
Thompson thought he was "curious" in that he 
seemed to have no earthlv interest in those crea- 



''PEG:' THE STORY OF A DOG. 175 



tares who were ever to Tliompsou so near and yet 
so far. He never spoke of women at all. He 
seemed never to have had an affair. He never 
amused or entertained his auditors with stories of 
past flirtations. One night, not long after his 
arrival, the presence of the outcast mastiff at his 
feet suggested to some one of his companions the 
story of the lost lady — Thompson alluded to her 
p(jetically as "the loved and lost,'' — and it was 
added that her name ann)ng her ill-assorted friends 
sounded like a schoolma'm's — "Miss Margaret. '' 
The doctor looked up (piickly, relapsed into thought- 
ful silence, and without a single comment upon the 
sad story, began ])resently to talk of something else. 
In other respects also did they think liim rather 
queer; for like numy men of his kind, he liked 
very well to be left alone. Often, accompanied by 
Peg, he passed the sentinel at midnight, coming 
home from some purposeless wandering. He was, 
it seemed, not unaccustomed to life on the frontier. 
Only a year ago he had visited California, and 
within a few months had been in Texas. He did 
not allude to anything as the specific object of his 
wanderings, but he left the impression upon his 
listeners that he was either running away from, or 
chasing, some fleeting shadow round the world. 
Often, far beyond the midnight, when the officer of 
the day passed in his rounds, he could see the lonely 
man sitting in the lamplight, and Peg crouched 
watchfully in the open window. 

The understanding between the brute and the 
man was so remarkable as to attract some attention. 



1Y6 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

Wherever the doctor's footsteps led him, the dog 
awkwardly waddled behind. Peg was now clean, 
well-fed, and carried her content to the extreme of 
being somewhat saiicy. Her master was her world, 
and she cared for nothing and no one else. The 
inhabitants of the little community might pat her on 
the head if they would, and she reciprocated by 
hardly so much as the wagging of her tail. Hun- 
dreds of times her name was called from open doors 
and across the parade-ground. She scarcely so 
much as turned her head, and usually walked with 
great dignity in the opposite direction. All this 
may have been a kind of negative revenge for past 
indignities; for she had the general good at heart. 
Often in the watches of the night her bark came 
faintly back from the surrounding hills. There was 
a legend that she never slept. But she did — at 
midday, upon the doctor's bed. 

The saying that time at last makes all things 
even, is only poetry, which is often far from true. 
But there was a notable instance in which the state- 
ment was fairly demonstrated. Tuck possessed two 
curs as ugly as himself, one of which was of Peg's 
own sex. Early one morning, as the butcher went 
to his avocation, accompanied by his two compan- 
ions, they three met Peg walking with great stateli- 
ness beside the wall. With his dogs beside him, 
Tuck could not resist the temptation to utter a 
vicious "s^'c^'m.^" With much more valor than 
judgment, the two dogs rushed to the onset. If Peg 
was frightened, she made no sign of it ; and quietly 
taking the female by the neck, with one great shake 



''PEO:' THE STORY OF A DOG. 177 

she covered her white breast with her enemy's blood. 
A few minutes after, she appeared at her master's 
bedside, apparently unconscious of the stain. After- 
wards, when told of the outrage by Tuck, the doctor 
called his grim friend to him, and, as he patted her, 
remarked: ''Margaret, did you kill the meat-man's 
dog? " And the "meat- man " went away convinced 
that dogs and men may sometimes have a singular 
mutuality of interests. 

The long summer passed, and autumn came with 
its nights of frosty sparkle and moonlit gloiy. The 
little walled post, with its bare parade-ground and 
its monotonous routine, dulled by daily use, seemed 
to grow irksome to the doctor. It was not strange 
that he liked better to wander through the long 
evenings among the near foot-hills, accompanied 
always by Peg. His associates had long since 
become accustomed to his vagaries, and paid small 
heed to his absence, as they whiled the dull night 
away with social games at cards — chieliy that cap- 
tivating one that for some unexplained reason has 
been named '"poker." True, they had concluded 
long ago that there was "something on the man's 
mind," and guessed, with a nearness to the truth 
they hardly suspected, that the position of "contract 
doctor" at a frontier post was, to a man of his 
attainments, little more than an excuse to rid him- 
self of himself. 

One night he lay on his back by the roadside, a 

gaunt cactus lifting its thin spire at his feet, and Peg 

beside him, looking at the stars. Tlis thoughts were 

dreamy, but they were busy. This refuge in the 

13 



1Y8 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

wilderness was not satisfactory. Go wliere lie would, 
he could not rid liiniself of a thought that had been 
with him so long that it was a part of hiui. He had 
lain there three hours, and in all that time had not 
evolved anj new idea as to his further profitable 
disposal of that troublesome person, himself. He 
had already resigned his appointment, and ques- 
tioned within himself where he should go. ''If I 
could only find her," he ejaculated, "I would start 
for China." 

The moonlight on his watch-dial showed it was 
one o'clock. The silence of the wilderness seemed 
to close around him impenetrably. Everything was 
asleep. The social game at the trader's store was 
undoubtedl}^ played out, and he wondered, as he 
walked slowly homeward, whither the ofiicer of the 
day, whose business it was to be up, had betaken 
himself. But he thought he heard afar ofi" the 
sound of wheels amid the rocks of the cafion. 
When he arrived at the trader's store, the sound 
grew louder, and he paused, out of mere wakeful- 
ness and curiosity, until the phantom mail, which so 
seldom brought him any letters, should come. Soon 
the four little black heads were dancing along above 
the roadside chaparral, and the driver, his hand 
upon his mouth, had begun to utter his hideous 
coyote-calls. Jehu seemed merry ; for the mail was 
from the west, the worst was passed, and home and 
rest were only twenty miles away. That is a long 
distance upon which to congratulate oneself at two 
o'clock in the morning, the moody physician 
thought; but happiness is a merely relative term. 



''PEG,'' THE STORY OF A DOG. 179 

A strap was broken, and while the driver mended 
it, and the sleepy clerk stood at the door, Peg- 
inspected the wheels, the boot, and, cautiously, the 
heels of the mules. Presently she seemed strangely 
attracted by something inside. She arose uj^on her 
hinder legs, and with her paws upon the broken 
window-frame, struggled, yelping, to climb higher. 
This amazed the doctor, and he also came near. 
Then a feminine voice was heard inside, and a hand 
ap])eared in the moonlight, whicli the dog devotedly 
licked. Presently the door was flung open, and a 
somewhat mutHed face appeared, and before the 
clumsy eft'orts of the dog could effect an entrance, 
her shaggy neck was clasped in some one's arms, 
and audible kisses rained upon her hairy face. "Oh, 
you dear old dog! where did you come from?'' 
were words the doctor thought he heard. It 
occurred to Idm as being rather an eccentric pro- 
ceeding also. He went to the window, and said 
''Peg, — old girl, "and Peg thumped her large tail 
upon the Hoor, and turned from one to the other, 
and displayed the whole immense length of her 
tongue, and seemed agonized between two great 
ha})pinesses. 

Then occurred the following conversation, inter- 
rupted by little gas]>s and swallowings : 

"Doctor — Daniels! Who — who — My goodness" 
(evidently recovering), " is it you ? " 

"]^ow, Maggie" (somewhat huskily and leaning 
very far into the vehicle), " where have you been ? " 

"Everywhere, sir" (entirely recovered); "to 
California last." 



180 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

' ' Well, but where ? — how ? ' ' 

^'Tliis is what I have to say to you, Ed," — and 
the lady's voice grew strong in its tone of injury,— 
"that no matter how you or I came here, or where 
from, you must go with me here and now, or I shall 
just get out and stay here, as I'm sure I've a right 
to do. And then I've been so far, and am so tired, 
and — and — I think I must be dreaming, after all.'' 
And then this Amazon broke down, and began to 
cry. 

The doctor never looked more earnest at the 
bedside of a very doubtful case than he did at this 
moment. He took off his hat solemnly, and wiped 
his forehead, looking down at the ground as though 
he had lost sometliing there. With all that he had 
been looking for so long, there in the shabby vehi- 
cle, — with what he had been willing to go to China 
for there within arm's length, — he stood fighting 
his pride outside. Then a hand came forth and 
touched his shoulder, and a voice said "I'm very 
sorry, Ed;" and immediately Doctor Edward Dan- 
iels turned resolutely and climbed into the coach. 
It would seem that after so many years of estrange- 
ment and regret, after a thousand maledictions by 
each upon all the stars and fates that preside over 
matrimony, after a trial by each of every quack 
medicine for unhappiness that human nature is wont 
to suggest to itself, it only required four little words 
to do the business ; and it was the woman, of course, 
who said them. He left everything behind, caring 
nothing for the morning astonishment of his late 
associates at the post, for the criticisms of his ene- 



''PEG,'' THE STORY OF A DOG. 181 

mies, or the regrets of his friends. He was very 
glad to take up again the burden of a love that 
had been wilful, ca])ricious and exacting, which had 
deJBed him twenty times in a day, which was notli- 
ing that he would have it to be, but which was 
nevertheless the love of a beautiful woman whose 
slave he was and wished to remain. 

Jehu had been listening and chuckling to him- 
self. "I reckon she's got him now," he said. 
''Hudup thar!" and he brought the long whip to 
bear with a keen snap under the off leader's traces. 

The dumb friend lay at inconvenient length along 
the bottom of the coach, quite content to have lier 
wrinkled neck used as an imperious lady's footstooL 
"I'm sure it's all very curious," said slie, "and her 
name is not Peg at all. And Ed, — there were a 
great many nice things in that trunk. To think of 
the Watson girls wearing my dresses ! — the hateful 
things." 

"The Watson girls are very fortunate if some 
Apache squaw is not wearing them by this time," 
said the doctor; "and you — well, you are equally 
lucky that the same amiable savages did not get 
your back hair, especially when you consider the 
extraordinary beauty of it;" and the doctor felt 
obliged to satisfy himself as to whether the brown 
coils were yet his by placing a rather large liand 
upon the lady's head. 

"I should not have cared if they had — at one 
time," said she. 

Thompson strenuously asserted for a long time 
that he suspected Miss Margaret was a married 



182 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

lady. "N^ow, I never knew a girl to act just so," 
he said; " at least, not to Qne. Tliey nsiiallj tumble 
to the racket sooner or later, and — " 

But here the lieutenant was assailed with jeers and 
laughter to the extent that he rose in a huff, and 
walked out of the room — the back room at the 
trader's store. 



IX. 
A GOOD INDIAN. 

IF the Lieutenant (reneral of the United States 
Army ever made the epigrammatic remark that 
has been attributed to him, that "the only good In- 
dian is a dead one/' it is probable that he was not 
at the moment thinking of that lone and solitary 
variety of the Child of Nature in the West who has 
never given the military any trouble. 

It is true that the Pueblo is only an Indian by 
the general classification ; but it is hoped that tlie 
reader will not therefore prematurely imagine that 
lie is again to be taken by a button and made to 
understand the author's views of the rights, wrongs, 
and general character of the dun-colored Ishmaelite 
who, with no history of his own making, has entered 
so largely and so falsely into American literature. 
The Pueblo is included among the tribes only by a 
mistake made in the beginning, and perpetuated 
tlirough time. There is, indeed, no distinction of 
race more perceptible than that which exists between 
the patient and home-loving farmer of the Pio 
Grande, and the lawless freebooter who from time 
immemorial has been his inveterate enemy. 

Those long, low, grass-grown mounds that lie in 
sequestered valleys and beside streams in all the 
nooks and corners of New Mexico and Arizona are 

183 



184 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

all that now remain to mark tlie outlines of those 
cities wliose names are long since forgotten, and 
whose last burgher died four or five misty centuries 
ago. IS'or were these their onlj or most enduring 
dwellings. They hewed out of the living rock of 
the canon's sheer walls, cities for the shelter of 
many thousand souls. They once peopled these 
regions, and hundreds of miles to the northward of 
them, with a race who lived under a common head, 
who practised many of the arts of civilization, who 
builded for permanence and beauty, who erected 
temj^les and monuments, who tilled the soil, who 
owned the ties of duty, family, and religion, and 
wliose ancestors, still more remote and far than all 
these desolate remains, anticipated the oldest legends 
of discovery, and crossed the Straits of Behring 
before the Norsemen or Portuguese had dreamed of 
anotlier world. The Pueblo is the small remainder 
of that people who preceded all that we call Ameri- 
can antiquity, and who were more brave and more 
prosperous than any of the tribes and races that 
have occupied the land since they passed away as a 
people. You might not suspect it, as you see him 
in his humble village, and engaged in his patient 
toil. He is the pathetic last man. 

In contradistinction from the Indian, as we know 
the man usually meant by that term, the Pueblo is 
purely a farmer, and has been so from time imme- 
morial. All his tastes and inclinations are peace- 
ful. In his intimate knowledge of his business, 
his laborious patience, his industrious contentment 
in what the sunshine brings and the soil yields, 



A GOOD INDIAN. 186 



he is the model farmer of America, and reminds one 
of all he has ever heard of the patient husbandmen 
of Egypt and China. It is surprising to note how 
he is the teacher of those whose ancestors were his 
latest conquerors and oppressors. The whole curi- 
ous routine of Mexican husbandry is borrowed from 
the Pueblo. His plough is made of two pieces of 
wood, tlie one mortised to the other at such an 
angle as makes at once the coulter and the beam. 
Sometimes, indeed, it is only the crotch of a tree, 
found suited to the purpose. Yoked to this are the 
gaunt, long-horned, patient oxen, tied together by 
a straight piece of wood bound to the horns. As 
one sees the brown-faced son of toil holding his rude 
plough by its one straight handle, walking beside 
the lengthening mark wliich can scarcely be called 
a furrow, through the low field yet wet and shining 
from recent inundations, urging his beasts with gro- 
tesque cries and a long rod, one can hardly help 
thinking that the rude wood-cnts tliat illustrate Ori- 
ental agriculture in the Biblical commentaries have 
come out of tlieir respective pages and are there 
before him. 

And it is the Pueblo who has modelled the 
universal architecture of the country. The low 
houses of sun-dried brick, with earthen roof and 
earthen beds and benches and floors, have an ori- 
gin far back of the conquest, and though some- 
what modified by it, are by no means the result 
of Spanish ideas of comfort and taste exclusively. 
The Pueblo, a farmer by nature, has from early 
times been surrounded by the Apache, his enemy 



18B FRONTIER AR2IY SKETCHES. 



always. Therefore the cluster of houses which 
formed the coiunioii village was each one a castle. 
He made no doors, and when he and his family 
retired for the night, thej climbed a ladder to the 
roof and drew the stairway after them. 

Tlieir villages are still the nuclei of farming com- 
munities, and their inhabitants, in the majority of 
instances, yet enter their houses through the roof. 
Tlie orchards of peach and apricot, and the laden 
grape-vines, as well as the low-lying little fields, 
are, with immense pains, surrounded by an almost 
inaccessible wall. The Pueblo shuts in his life from 
the world, and delights in j^ersonal isolation. His 
curious lunise and closely fenced garden are not so 
from motives of fear alone. In common with all the 
aborigines of the continent, he seems bent upon 
solitude amid the thousand changes which encroacli 
upon him, and desirous of passing away silently to 
join his fVithers, without a memento, a monument, 
or a word of history, save the meagre annals of his 
decline and death, told only by his conquerors. For 
hundreds of ^^ears it has been so, and the picture 
presented seems almost an impossible one to the 
restless American mind. For centuries beyond 
which the poor Pueblo has still his traditions, with 
decreasing numbers, with new surroundings, with 
the predatory Apache and the tyrannical and covet- 
ous Spaniard, and latterly the Yankee stranger ever 
peering over his garden wall, he has toiled on, 
clinging to ancient habits, intensely occupied with 
the sordid details of the humblest of all lives, and. 
through all, content. Kor will it be considered 



A. GOOD INDIAN. 187 



strange if, as thej tell, the light required by his 
ancient faith is still kejit burning upon his heartli, 
and in liis heart he still eherislies a faith that in tlie 
light of some radiant morning the immortal One, 
King of all the faithful, will come again from the 
East, bringing deliverance witli him. 

But it is tlie recollection of a harvest-dav amons^ 
these patient and patlietic people tliat suggested all 
this. Far down the sandy valley, as one approaches, 
stand the long lines of brown wall, and far to the 
riglit glitter in tlie noon sunshine the slimy pools 
and yellow current of the mosquito-haunted river. 
The settlement, with the village for its centre, seems 
a large one. On every hand are the evidences of 
unwonted activity. The cumbrous carts, with their 
framework of osier, howl dismally on oilless axles as 
they pass you on the roadside, to return laden with 
yellow bundles. Here are four women, the eldest 
old indeed, and the youngest almost a child, who 
trudge along in the sand, each one's back loaded 
with fresh fruit. Did you ask for 2:>eaches ? The 
eldest deliberately unloads herself by the roadside, 
opens her bag, selects a double handful of the 
largest and ripest, and presents tliem, with a moth- 
erly smile upon her w^rinkled old face. She will 
take no money, and trudges on, leaving you to look 
after her and reflect that courtesy is by no means 
confined to the Christians who have white faces. 
Perhaps the small incident is characteristic; for with 
just such kindness did this poor woman's ancestors 
welcome the strangers from across the sea, so many 
centuries ago. 



1 88 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 



In the fields on either hand the reapers wade 
slowly along, patiently gathering each ^xdlow stalk. 
Some distance aw^ay, a clond of dust, and straw 
tossed high in air, and uncommon noises, proclaim 
the active operation of a primitive threshing- 
machine. Around a circular space some twenty feet 
in diameter tall poles are set in the ground, and 
between these, from one to the other, are drawn 
thongs of raw-hide. Within, the ground is covered 
with wheat, which is being trodden out by some 
twenty unbridled donkeys. The small urchins tum- 
l^le and halloo in the straw outside of the enclosure, 
like children in a straw-pile anywhere in the world ; 
and two women and a man in tlie centre of the ring 
so work uj^on the feelings of the donkeys that, what 
with gestures, and shouts, and sundry long poles, 
they go fast and faster, as diabolically mixed as Tarn 
O'Shanter's witch-dance. To a man accustomed to 
close intimacy with the kind, there is ever some- 
thing ridiculous and grotesque in the long ears and 
solemn countenance of the ass. Stir intense dignity 
and preternatural solemnity into unbecoming friski- 
ness, and the scene becomes pitiably ludicrous. As 
you watch these who tread out the corn on the 
ancient threshing-floor that seems translated out of 
the Old Testament, you find yourself intent upon 
seeing how, with long ears laid back and flying 
heels, they revenge upon each other the indignities 
of their masters. 

Somehow, as 3^ou approach the village, you gather 
the impression that all the women you meet are very 
large and all the men are very small. For aught I 



A GOOD INDIA A. 189 

know it is a MUicj ; but the average Pueblo woman 
is a creature whose dignity would not suffer by com- 
parison with some of the queens of civilization. And 
you begin to discover that there are also girls, among 
whom the selling of fruit is a specialty. A row of 
heads are just visible above the wall, and before 
each there is a huge melon and a fruit basket. This 
is the temporary market, instituted without issue of 
bonds or previous arrangement, upon the arrival of 
every government train. I would there were some 
lone spot upon the habitable globe where the tricks 
of traffic were unknown. Here the fruit trade is 
rendered considerably more lively by the mei-ry 
eyes, white teeth, and brown and sturdy shouldei-s 
of a company of merry market-women. Surely the 
long train of wrongs that have pressed to the verge 
of extinction a hospitable and gallant race have by 
these creatures been but seldom heard of, or are 
poorly remembered. 

The village has the appearance of being com- 
posed of blank walls. Only the square tops of the 
houses, and none of the domestic operations, can 
be seen. But the loaded boughs of trees droop 
over the walls, and here and there are glimpses of 
trailing vines and pleasant" vistas. But it is in the 
midst of a dreary land ; and the stretch of yellow 
stubble between you and the bank, where the Cot- 
tonwood leaves tremble lazily in the summer wind, 
the suggestion of rest, quiet, contentment and plenty 
behind the drab walls, and the holiday faces around 
you, contrast strongly with the bare brown moun- 
tains that rise on every hand. In anv more favored 



190 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

country tlie simple pastoral scene, which remains 
lono- with you in the hundreds of monotonous miles 
yet to come, might scarcely be remembered at all. 
From villages such as this, fenced about with walls, 
upon one side of wdiicli grows tlie cactus, and upon 
tlie other verdure, fruit and content, the very name 
of this curious peoi)le is taken. ''Pueblo" means 
only a town. The old name by which they call 
themselves, the name which expresses lineage and 
a country, I know not, and there are few wdio care 
wduit it may be. 

Yet a little further, and there is another oriental 
threshing floor, upon which the scene is different 
from the last. The children and the persecuted 
and revengeful donkeys have vanished together, 
and the hands and minds oi tlie two stoical persons 
there are occupied in an operation so striking and 
important in the operations of simple life that it was 
more frequently used than any other as a simile to 
teach the sons of the patriarchs the lessons which 
all men ought to know. It is the winnowing of the 
wheat. One of the persons is an old man, so with- 
ered of shank and so lean of face that he would 
seem to have been subjected to some process of dry- 
ing for the sake of preservation. The other is a 
woman, and directly his opposite in all things. I 
cannot tell if it is always so, or if the picture was 
only made for me; but I lingered and studied it. 
She too was tall, and had a stolid and determined, 
but rather comely, face. Her head was bound in a 
folded shawl, but her hair escaped un'confined and 
lay about her shoulders. Her outer garment was 



.1 GOOD IN I) I AX. 191 



not a gown, but the dress of her kind, so universiilly 
worn that it seemed a kind of uniform, being a bhm- 
ket of black wool, bound about with a red sash. 
From the knee her limbs were bare, as were also 
her arms and shoulders. She stood with her left 
foot advanced, and her large arms held high above 
her head the saucer-shaped basket, over the edge of 
which poured the slow stream of mingled chaif and 
wheat. Considered merely as a bronze statue en- 
dowed with life, and without reference to any other 
faculties or qualities, this stalwart woman, who was 
entirely unccmscious of herself, was the most perfect 
specimen of grace conceivable. When the padded 
queen of the ballet stands in the tableau, in an atti- 
tude meant to be the embodiment of gracefulness, 
but which is but a mincing and studied artificiality, 
their I know how far is any attempt of art from the 
grace that untaught nature attains, and think of the 
Pueblo squaw who winnowed wheat by the roadside 
in the afternoon sunshine. 

There was still another personage there, who at 
first escaped notice. His presence was not essential 
to the work in hand, but it would be a mistake to 
underestimate his personal importance. In the slant 
shadow of the straw-pile lay a big baby boy, in the 
entire nakedness of nature. He flung his brown, 
round limbs high in air, in the lissome gymnastics 
of infancy, and while he gathered mysterious sus- 
tenance from the sucking of one of his fists, with the 
other he clutched awkwardly at the sunshine and 
other imaginary nothings that float in the air before 
the eyes of infancy. 



192 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

It is a question whether the much-discussed sub- 
ject of woman's rights really had its origin in the 
minds of cultivated and highly-educated people. 
Among all the aboriginal tribes of America, women 
have had their "rights" time whereof the memory 
of their brutes of husbands runs not to the contrary. 
And the truth is that those rights entail upon the 
sex, as well in civilization as in savagery, that con- 
comitant of equal drudgery wdiieli the Logans and 
the Stantons and the Miss Dickinsons would be 
very unwilling to assume. To the privileges and 
labors of masculinity, the conditions of civilization 
seem to be an eternal bar. Once a robust Pueblo 
woman was selling pinons at the corner of the plaza 
at Albuquerque, and a sleek-looking infant lay in a 
blanket beside her. I asked her how old the 
youngster was. She complacently answered, "Day 
before yesterday," and pointed with her finger to 
that part of the heavens where the moon was at 
that inconvenient hour in the early morning, at 
which, as I am credibly informed, babies every- 
where are in the habit of coming into the world. 
She was proud of the urchin, too, as all women are, 
and slipping her finger through his waistband, held 
him dangling and kicking like a large spider for our 
closer inspection. Such women as these are ak)ne 
physically competent to maintain "rights." 

So many strange stories are told and believed of 
the Pueblos — of their religion, social customs, and 
domestic life, — that it is almost impossible to sift 
truth from romance. But they are, at least, the 
only ones of the original races who have always 



A GOOD INDIAN. 193 

been friendly to the white man. When General 
Kearney took possession of the Territory in 1850, 
in the name of the United States, the immediate 
release from the peonage and semi-slavery of so 
many years so affected the hearts of the simple 
people that for a long time they are said to have 
clung to the belief that the commandant was the 
long-looked-for "man from the East," come for 
their deliverance. Repeated enforcements of equal 
laws, protection from Apaches, and general and 
reciprocal good treatment, have conspii-ed to place 
them in such relations with the great power destined 
before many years to absorb the whole central con- 
tinent as none others of the aborigines enjoy. 

It will not do to imagine that because the Pueb- 
los are purely agricultural, they are incapable of 
defence. On the contrary, their whole history has 
been one of turmoil and strife. The Mexicans op- 
pressed and the Comanches and Apaches murdered 
them; and these ancient and unremitting contests 
are the cause of that air of ancient ruin and dead 
history that so much of ^ew Mexico now wears. It 
is not the crumbling church, and the foot-worn and 
dilapidated village street, that are the oldest things 
in Mexico. Far back of the conquest existed the 
semi-civilization seen in the Pueblo village of to-day. 
Almost unchanged, we see it still. The cities whose 
walls are grass-grown ridges now, perhaps had 
bustling thoroughfares and a teeming population 
while the mound-builders of the Mississippi valley 
were at their strange work. 

But these are questions for the savans. It is 
13 



194 FROXTIER ARMY ^KETCIIEtS. 

with the present, and with such things as are appa- 
rent in daily life, that this sketch has to do. I 
said that through all these centuries of conflict and 
change, it was strange to note that manners and 
dress had remained so nearly unchanged. But that 
remark needs this further explanation : that it is of 
course impossible that contact with others should 
have absolutely no eflect, and here is an instance. 
It is not missionary effort — not even of the invin- 
cible phalanx of Jesuitism, — not Bibles, tracts, and 
preaching, that come nearest the heart of the pagan. 
The Indian of every tribe and latitude has obtained 
for himself a new character as the autocrat of the 
speckled shirt, and these conservative people are 
long since clothed upon with the new idea. Of all 
the girls, women, old men, and babies, in sight, 
there is not one, except the last, who does not wear 
calico as the material of some queerly-cut garment. 
The old man who stands watching the winnowing, 
with the somewhat imbecile attempt at helping, has 
on only three articles of apparel, and two of them 
are cotton. The statuesque woman wears beneath 
the black woollen uniform a snow-white garment of 
a not unfamiliar pattern, which, when worn alone, 
seems ever to have the indisputable merit of loose- 
ness without any corresponding virtue as a covering. 
The girls who stand a-row behind the wall are all 
clad in the material whose familiar print takes one 
back at a bound to the square stone buildings that 
are the wealth and pride of the diminutive common- 
wealth of Rhode Island. But scarcely as dresses 



A GOOD INDIAX. \S)b 



are tliey worn, and it is only tlie material that is 
fashionable with these. 

Here the idea of comniunisni has been ^jractically 
carried out for all these years. The village, with its 
walls and gardens and curious houses, has one com- 
mon purpose in its occupancy — that of protection 
and society. There is no industry but agriculture. 
There are no stores, no shops, no sound of hammer 
and file. Every house was contrived for but two 
purposes: residence and defence. There are not 
even streets, and only narrow paths wind between 
onion-beds and currant bushes from house to house. 
Each family is self-productive of every needed article 
of domestic economy, even to the fire-baked pottery 
from which they eat and drink. The black woollen 
garment was dyed after nature's recipe, upon the 
back of tlie sheep, and the moccasins were made 
by the wearer. The clumsy cart, upon which the 
Mexican has been unable to improve, is shaped and 
pinned and tied together by the unaided skill of the 
man who expects to use it. The only article of anv 
constant use or importance, not actually made upon 
the premises, is the cotton cloth heretofore referred 
to. It is a community in which there are no ques- 
tions of finance, and that could live without money. 
Strangely enough, in all these things there is no 
diversity of style. Like birds' nests, as they are 
made now, so have they been made from time 
immemorial. The porous earthen water-jug which 
hangs from the rafters in every house is of tlie same 
shape, with the same ornamentation, in every case. 
The old idea of the Biblical commentaries comes 



o 



196 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

back again, when two women sit grinding at the 
mill, tlie loaf is baked upon the hearth, and the girls 
are seen returning from the spring, each with her 
tall water-jar upon her head. These people only 
need to live in dingy striped tents, surrounded by 
their goats and asses, and to be a little less heathen- 
ish in their faith, to reproduce within the bounds of 
an overgrown republic the days when Jacob worked 
for that grasping patriarch, his future father-in-law, 
and was cheated at last, and the fatlier of the patri- 
archs sat at his tent door and watched the countless 
flocks that grazed the future inheritance of his 
descendants. 

As these primitive agriculturists produce within 
themselves all they need, so they are learned in all 
that it is needful for them to know. Long before 
the little monkish knowledge they may have con- 
sented to acquire came to them from across the sea, 
they knew the times and seasons, and had a calen- 
dar in which the days were three hundred and sixty- 
five. They practised then, as now, their patient 
agriculture with a skill and success some part of 
which would be a boon to farmers who subscribe for 
agricultural journals and are engaged in the polem- 
ics of farming as a means of disseminating the sur- 
plus of information that they have acquired. They 
knew how to take the crude metals from their native 
beds, and mould them into forms for ornament and 
use. Their brethren of the south built colossal 
piles of hewn stone. The fountains they made in 
thirsty lands are playing yet, and the roads they 
built still lead to the gates of the Mexican capital. 



A GOOD lyniAX. 197 



Thej have, indeed, tlirougli all these centuries, 
gone backward and not forward. But the truth 
wliich is even now apparent, tliat for not one of all 
the original tribes of America is there any hope, will 
probably not be accepted as such until, within a 
few generations, the end shall have come. There 
is an isolation in the midst of surrounding life and 
activity, that accepts no compromise with death. 
Ever the patient victim of change, himself unchang- 
ing, and never the aggressor, with the material for 
a hundred histories, no" one may know how heroic 
or pathetic, gone in the past, when the poor Pueblo 
shall finally leave his seed to be sown with a patent 
drill and his harvest to be reaped with a clattering 
machine, he will merit at least the remembrance 
that his hands were never red with Saxon blood 
and that his hearth was abandoned without reprisal. 

But before he goes he will see the white man's 
magic in the engine rushing before its train down 
the valley of tlie Rio Grande, and the iron rail will 
usurp the place of the donkey-path before his door."^ 
And soon the denizens of whitewashed towns will 
have scared the husbandman from his plough and 
the fruit-seller from the wall ; and the noisy civilized 
crowd will forget, if they ever knew, that in these 
transformed regions there existed so peaceful and 
pleasant a thing as the home and farm of the Pueblo. 

* Written ten years ago. The railway daily performs the feat described, 
and the time for studying the modern life of this last of his interesting race 
has forever passed. 



X. 

JACK'S DIYOEOE. 

HE was not black, thougli universally known as 
"Black Jack,'' and except that lie had upon 
him the ineffaceable marks of sun and wind, might 
have been considered more than ordinarily fair. His 
hair was of a reddish brown, and his eyes had that 
steady and unflinching gaze which bespeaks for their 
owner honesty without blemish and vision without 
flaw. 

It is not enough to say that Jack was merely a 
frontiersman, because in many instances that only 
expresses an accident and not a character. He had 
about him that something which, while it can only 
exist on the border, is yet a part of the man. 
Though not a negative person, he was one of those 
of whom a clearer idea may be given by stating 
what he was not than by explaining what he was. 
There is a whole world in which all the famous and 
remarkable doings of mankind are performed, of 
which Jack knew absolutely nothing ; and in him I 
do but describe a class, of wliich he was a repre- 
sentative man. 

Woman, in all the splendor of pearls of the 
ocean and gems of the mine, endowed with all the 
refinements of civilization, and the inheritor of all 
the tact and delicacy that result from ages of refine- 

198 



JACK'S DIVORCE. ■ 199 



ment — bland, bewitching, and tearfully and won- 
derfully made up, — lie had never even seen._ Fem- 
ininity conveyed no such idea to him. The women 
he had known were only women in the broad sense 
in which female is not male. The wharfs and streets 
of crowded cities, the throng of the pavement and 
the exchange, the crowd and jam and bustle of trade, 
blooming fields and paved roads, were all crowded 
out of his conceptions of life and men, and he for- 
tunately had no speculations and opinions to digest 
concerning them. He had never even heard the 
sound of the church bells, and, perhaps also happily 
for him, was steeped in Fijian ignorance of all the 
fateful differences in creeds which exist among those 
who diligently seek after the truth. He was 
benighted,' but he was perpetually free from any 
attack of odium theologlcnui. 

In his ignorance of all that is fashionable and 
most that is good among civilized mankind, he was 
even ignorant of the praises and luxuries men some- 
times earn by dying, and the fair monuments and 
flattering epitaphs of Greenwood and Olivet would 
have filled him with astonishment. His was the 
rock-piled and lonely grave of the wilderness ; and 
it had never occurred to him that a palace was neces- 
sary to the welfare of mouldering clay. 

If the schoolmaster was ever abroad in western 
Arkansas, where Jack first saw the light, the benign 
influence never reached his mind. He could not 
read, and was ignorant of the primary rules of arith- 
metic and of everything else in the way of books. 
The immense literature of fiction and newspaperdom 



200 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

• 

he had never even heard of; and jet he knew, tra- 
ditionally as it were, some of Watts' s hjmns, and 
would repeat them with the same unction and pathos 
with which the childish and immortal lines are said 
by all who speak the English tongue. 

But he was not a grown-up child. He lacked 
none of the great essentials that go to make up the 
remarkable biped whose ancestor was an ape and 
whose future is very doubtful. He spoke his mother 
tongue with a fluency equal to all the requirements 
of his life, and he spiced and strengthened it with 
that piquant slang which expresses so much in so 
few words that it is almost to be regretted that it is 
very vulgar to use it. His most peculiar character- 
istic, however, was not an educational one. It con- 
sisted in the seeming absence of anything like per- 
sonal fear. Whole armies of men, surging masses 
that number many thousands, may, and often do, 
go through a long day of carnage witliout any 
instance of cowardice. But this is not the variety of 
courage meant. He limped, had lost a finger, and 
carried an ugly scar upon his cheek. But all these 
he had obtained at different times, and all in fight- 
ing with Indians. But not for glory. With no 
particular interest at stake, pecuniary or otherwise, 
he still wandered through the canons and over the 
hills, alone, and solely bent upon killing the game 
he loved to hunt, unmoved by repeated encounters 
and escapes. Unless questioned, he never alluded 
to his adventures. He seemed to be ignorant of 
any manner of life among the conditions of which 



JACK'S DIVORCE. 201 



was included the common essential of personal 
safety. 

There is a certain weapon which all have seen 
and with which far too many are familiar. The 
name of its inventor has gone down to posterity 
with something like renown. Skilfully handled, it 
is a weapon that few like to ftice. It is a small 
arsenal of rapid and sudden death, and a single 
man, skilled in the use of Colt's revolver, is almost 
equal to six men with old-fashioned arms that fire 
but a single shot. In the use of this pretty toy, 
Jack was a miracle even among his own compan- 
ions. He was a walking Gatling, and the pair that 
were continually upon his person were worn smooth 
with constant handling. 

This v/as one reason why Jack was not afraid of 
Indians. There was no moment when eye and ear 
were not alert. He frequently remarked: "They 
ain't got me yit ; a man can't die nohow till his 
time comes." And in that bit of profound philoso- 
phy he believed with so profound and simple a faith 
that it seemed a pity it had not more sense in it. 

But simple and honest as was the life of this 
gentle savage, he became the victim of one great 
trouble, and that of course had a woman at the 
bottom of it. It was the incident that made him 
seem more like the men around him, and demon- 
strated as well his kinship with the great mass of 
mankind. 

Dolores was the handsomest woman Jack had 
ever known in his wild life ; or, at least, she so 
appeared to him. She was Mexican — which is 



202 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



Spanish, — had been once as fair as a brown-colored 
nymph, and was still as coquettish as it runs in her 
race to be, and as false as the profane word Shaks- 
peare uses as a comparative in this same connection. 
She was only a laundress in the military post hard 
by; but her eyes were black and her teeth were 
white, and she cauglit Jack on the tender side which 
all such men present to female blandishments. 

Bold as he always had been, he must therefore 
surrender to this fragile seiiorita. She had had 
many lovers. She could hardly count them upon 
all her fingers. Some she had discarded, to-wit : 
all she had ever had, at odd times, of her own race. 
And some had discarded her, namely: certain Amer- 
ican Lotharios, who could be faithful long to none. 
But she was not broken-hearted, nor indeed very 
sorrowful, and had steadily replaced vacancies by 
new recruits. And last came honest Jack, whose 
heart she accepted without hesitation, and whose 
money she spent without remorse. Doubtless for 
her sake Jack might have left off risking his life 
amongst the Apaches. There was no telling but 
that he might in time have been induced to live in a 
town and sleep upon a bed. 

It must be understood in this case, as in all 
others of the kind, that a man's liking for a woman 
is not controlled by any trait in her character. Do- 
lores was still maturely handsome ; she knew men 
very well ; and she practised the art of coquetry 
with the skill of all her sex, added to the historic 
proficiency of her race. It may be that there had 
descended to her, through a long line of forgotten 



JACK'S DIVORCE. 203 

aucestrj, some of the cunning graces and charms, 
and some of the velvet-covered trickery, which h)ng 
ago distinguished the dames of Arragon and OKI 
Castile. She had at least the softness, the subtle 
smooth suavity, which gives to the women of the 
Latin race a peculiar attractiveness to tlie bluff 
American. 

So she married the hunter, after the manner of 
the country ; and well it was to one whose vows sat 
with such habitual lightness, that the ceremony was 
of no more binding character. It was hona jide to 
Jack, however, and tliey two lived together in a 
very small house near the outer wall of the post. 
Perhaps Dolores never intended to cling with very 
great faithfulness to him alone. She probably argued 
that it was for the present convenient; and, judging 
him by her standard, calculated npon his roving life 
and the faithlessness of men in general for final free- 
dom when some new inducement should off'er. But, 
as stated, it was a part of Jack's personality to be 
faithful. He had no other idea than that he w^as 
bound hand and foot, and had never read history 
and thus become acquainted with the illustrious 
examples there aff'orded of matrimonial unfaithful- 
ness. And as was natural to one of his ignorance 
and simplicity, he expected a reciprocity of feeling. 

In a few" weeks, Dolores began to use her fine 
eyes upon various of the uncouth masculines she 
met, after the old fiishion, and Jack began to grow 
moody, and to look hard and determined out of his 
blue eyes, and by and by there w^as a look upon his 
face that the veriest death-seeker in all that des- 



204 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

perate country would hardly have cared to defy, 
and when at home he certainly kept his house and 
his family to himself 

But now there came and stayed at the trader's 
store a man who wore barbaric gold and a linen 
sliirt; one whose fingers were long, and exceeding 
nimble in dealing cards, and whose countenance had 
about it a look of mingled bravado and cunning. 
He came as a traveller, and stayed for weeks ; and 
ere long he and Jack's wife were exchanging glances 
of recognition. Fraud and foxiness were so plainly 
written upon his person that it was easy to believe 
that to defraud Jack, or, if not Jack, tlien some one 
else, was wliat he stayed and waited for. 

But meantime the hunter had ideas and purposes 
of his own ; and, with a silence that was ominous, 
he kept those purposes to liimself. He seemed 
always waiting and watching for something; and the 
man wlio has many a time waited and watched among 
the rocks and hills, and many a time come off victor 
through vigilance, does not usually wait and watch 
for nothing. What he waited for finally came, and 
with it his idea of reparation and justice. 

As was not uncommon, he took his gun and can- 
teen, and went away to the mountains. But he 
seemed to go regularl}^, and generally returned on 
the third day. Strangely enough, he brought back 
no game, but looked clay-begrimed and tired. So 
far as known, he still found everything to be, to use 
his own expression, "reg'lar." l^evertheless, it 
was a fact among the knowing ones, that the dull 
hours were beguiled by the gambler at Jack's cabin, 



JACK'S DIVORCE. 205 



rluring these frequent absences of the owner. A 
month or more passed in tliis manner, and Jack's 
look grew cokler and harder every day. Ko com- 
mon man could have passed unquestioned. But 
there was an evidence of purpose in his demeanor 
and a method in his coming and going, and those 
who knew him quietly awaited results. Meantime, 
possessing all the qualifications that are valued and 
admired in such a country, and having been fiiithful 
to all and wronged no one, he had many friends ; 
while his enemy, if such the gambler might as yet 
be called, had none. 

Several times hints were given to the latter, by 
those who acted in the interests of general peace, 
that a day of reckoning might come to him. But he 
considered himself in luck in having so simple an 
enemy, and stayed on. He did not know his man ; 
that was the general comment. More than once, 
when Jack was absent on his apparently fruitless 
expeditions to the mountains, a tall figure that 
looked like his had been seen by some sentinel 
walking his beat to approach the cabin, and to glide 
noiselessly away in the darkness. 

One starry October night, when Jack had been 
gone only since the morning, he suddenly walked 
in among the story-tellers and poker-pl^ayers at the 
sutler's store. All turned toward him, with inquiry 
and surprise in their faces. He looked very grim, 
and closed the door carefully behind him. ''Men," 
he said, abruptly, "come along with me now, an' 
I'll answer the questions ye 've been lookin' at me 



206 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



for more 'ii a montli. An' purvidiii' I don't do 
notliin' desp'rit, will ye agree not to interfere ?" 

A lialf-luoked and lialf-spokeii answer was given, 
and four men went out with Jack, among whom 
certain uniforms did not disdain to appear. At the 
door he untied a donkey, such as are common in the 
country, and drove the animal before him toward 
the cabin. The hunter was foremost, and without 
ceremony pushed open the door and entered. At 
the same moment, with the dexterity of long prac- 
tice, he whipped out of its place the inevitable 
revolver, with three strides was across the room, 
and in a moment after the monte-dealer was looking 
down the bore of it with an expression of counte- 
nance which indicated that he regarded it as being 
several inches in diameter. 

"ISTow,'' said Jack, in the peculiar tone which 
indicates earnestness without any doubt, '"My time 
has come. You an' this woman must git up an' go 
right along with me. Mister, you orter know me. 
If ye want to shoot, ye kin hev a chance; but I'm 
apt to hit, an' I'll try, so help me God.'' 

This fearful adjuration was uttered, not as the 
common profanity of an angry man, but in a tone 
and manner that gave it a fearful meaning. "Git 
up," said he, as the gambler, with paling face, 
seemed to say something conciliatory. He arose 
instantly. "Xow," for the first time addressing 
the woman, ''git your traps together. Quick," he 
said sharply, as she seemed to hesitate, ''ye shell 
hev yer lover's company from this night to all etar- 
nitv." 



JAGICS DIVORCE. 20T 

Though a scene in which the comic was not alto- 
gether wanting, there was still something terrible in 
it. The woman, her olive roses blanched with ter- 
ror, moved about, gathering her apparel into a bun- 
dle. The gambler glanced furtively at the door, 
and at his own weapon lying upon the table. But 
Jack's eye was upon him, and the implacable weapon 
was in his hand. Finally he placed his hand in his 
bosom and drew forth a plethoric bag, opened it, 
and poured some of the shining pieces into his 
hand. Frightened as she undoubtedly was, a glitter 
came into the woman's eyes as she saw them. 
There was no situation in life in which the chink of 
the dollars would not be music to her. But Jack's 
face only changed to take on a look of intense con- 
tempt, as his enemy pitifull}^ offered him first the 
handful and then the bag. He was again mistaken 
in his man. 

"When the woman at last stood with her bundle 
in her hand, Jack pointed to the door, and bade her 
and the gambler move out together. He caused 
the woman to mount the diminutive donkey, and the 
gambler walked behind. 

Straight up the slanting mountain-side they 
started, the implacable husband taking the gam- 
bler's weapon from the table as he left the room. 
Away in the starlit gloom the strange procession 
passed, and as the donkey picked his careful way 
among the stones, plodding safely and patiently 
after the manner of his kind, the last sounds the 
bystanders heard were the wailing and sobbing 
of the woman, the stumbling footsteps of the gam- 



208 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

bier, and, behind all, Jack's long and steady stride. 
And all these died away in the distance, and in the 
silence of the night the witnesses of the scene stood 
at the door of the deserted cabin, and looked at 
each other, and afterwards went back to the store, 
each one privately gratified, and none caring to 
say so. 

After three or four days Jack returned empty- 
handed. He was questioned now, for human curi- 
osity cannot be restrained forever. A grim humor 
was in his face as he said: "I've purvided for 'em. 
They've meat enough for three weeks;" adding, 
"any of you as wus particularly fond of him air 
informed that he wus well wen I kim away, o'ny a 
leetle lonesome. But he don't know enough to find 
his way back here, an' I reckon he'll hev to fight 
now." 

And Jack thereupon cleaned his pistols, got 
together such things as hunters carry, said he be- 
lieved he'd "go back to Californy," and at sunrise 
started out upon that pathless journey toward the 
northwest, that to him was only a question of time 
and life, and has not been heard of to this day. 

Some months after this, the Mexican guide of a 
scouting party led the soldiers, hungry, bewildered, 
and parched with thirst, to where he said there was, 
years before, a spring among the rocks. They 
found it, and near it a deserted "dug-out." From 
this to the spring a well-worn path was made. 
When he saw it, the eyes of the professional trainer 
opened wide, but when he approached the hut he 
threw up his hands with a gesture of extreme aston- 



JACK'S DIVORCE. 209 



isliment, exclaiming, ^'■Madre de Dios ! — it was a 



woman 



Upon the floor still lay the sodden fragments of 
a woman's shawl, and not far away the coyote- 
gnawed remains of a man's boot. What had become 
of the late residents of the lonesome place, no one 
could tell. But here at last was Jack's mystery; 
the house that he built for them, and in which Dolo- 
res and her last lover met a fate that will never be 
known. 

There have been men very like Othello, who 
never heard of Shakspeare. But the Dolores and 
the Desdemonas do not greatly resemble each other, 
— at least not in IS'ew Mexico. 



XL 
COYOTES. 

HE has been called an outcast bj a notorious 
poet. He is universally conceded to be a 
sneak, a thief, and an arrant coward. He is a lier- 
by by day, and a wanderer o' nights : a dissipated 
wretch in whose w^hole history there is not a redeem- 
ing trait. He has an extensive connection, but no 
family. He is disowned by the dogs, and not recog- 
nized at all by respectable foxes. The gaunt gray 
wolf who sends his hoarse voice across the ravine in 
a howl the most dismal and harrowing that ever dis- 
turbed midnight and silence, will have no fellowship 
with the little thief v/ho seems to have stolen his 
gray coat, and w^ould fain be counted among his 
poor relations. 

And yet the coyote is the representative animal 
of the border. It is his triangular visage, his sharp 
muzzle, especially fitted for the easy investigation 
of the smallest aperture into other people's affairs, 
his oblique, expressionless eyes, that should have a 
place in the adornment of escutcheons and the 
embellishment of title-pages. The buffalo, who is 
his successful rival in such matters, occupies the 
place because his shaggy stupid head is big; but 
the buflfalo is not the representative of anything 
more than stupid pondei'osity. He has roamed in 

210 



COYOTES. 211 



countless thousands over his pLains for hundreds of 
years, and during all that time he has never even 
bellowed. There is no degree of pleasure, anger, 
excitement or passion that can induce him to make 
a sound other than a guttural groaning that ill 
becomes his size. That great equipment of lungs 
and throat and nostrils is good for nothing in acous- 
tics, and while he might make the valleys to echo, 
and might almost shake the hills, he spends his life 
in galloping, fighting, butting at sandbanks, and eat- 
ing. Especially does he affect the latter. Plis life 
is one long process of deglutition and rumination. 
He never stole anything. He never made the moon- 
lit hours hideous for love of his own voice. Colos- 
sal in size and fearful of aspect, he is yet so dull as 
to be incapable of self-defence. JS^one but a great 
booby would deliberately get himself exterminated 
by running alongside of a slow-going railway train, 
to be shot by kid-glove sportsmen, and even by 
women, three or four score times, in the back, with 
silver-mounted pocket pistols. His stupidity is 
illustrated every day by the countless bleaching 
skulls and faded tufts of brown hair which mark his 
death-place at the hands of people to whom the 
riding of a mustang would be an impossible thing 
and the killing of a jackass rabbit a wonderful feat 
of skill and valor. 

]^ot so his neighbor and actual master, the 
coyote. He will lengthen out the days of his years 
until his voice sounds hollow and thin and aged in 
the watches of the night. JSTothing but infinite 
pains and insidious strychnine will end his vagabond 



212 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

life. As his gray back moves slowly along at a 
leisurely trot above the tall reeds and coarse grass, 
and he turns his sly face over his shoulder to regard 
you, he knows at once if you have with you a gun. 
The coyote is a reflective brute, and has an inquir- 
ing mind. Only convince him of the fact that you 
are unarmed, and he proceeds to interview you in 
a way that, for politeness and unobtrusiveness, is 
recommended as a model to some certainly more 
intelligent but slightly less obtrusive animals. . 

As he sets himself complacently down upon his 
tail at the summit of the nearest knoll, and lolls his 
red tongue, and seems to wink in your direction, he 
is so much like his cousin, the dog, that you can 
hardly refrain from whistling to him. Make any 
hostile demonstration, and he moves a few paces 
further on, and sits down again. Lie down in the 
grass and remain quiet for a little time, and by 
slyly watching him out of the corner of your eye 
you will discover that he has been joined by a half- 
dozen of his brethren and friends. Slowly they 
come creeping nearer and nearer, and are cautiously 
investing you upon all sides. Our curious friend 
has an object in all this, aside from mere frivolous 
curiosity. He knows that all flesh is grass, and now 
wishes to find out — first, if you are dead; and 
second, supposing you are not, if there is anything 
else in your neighborhood that is eatable. You rise 
up in sudden indignation, and scare the committee 
away. In such case you have oftended the coy(,)te 
family deeply, and they retire to a safe distance, and 
bark ceaselessly until they have hooted you out of 



COYOTES. 213 



the neighborhood. That night he and his friends 
will come and steal the straps from your saddle, the 
boots from under your head, the Jiieat from the 
frying-pan (and politely clean the pan), and the 
pony's bridle. Nothing that was originally of ani- 
mal organization, or that has the faintest flavor of 
grease, though it be but the merest reminiscence, 
comes amiss to him. Through a thousand variations 
in his family history, and through all the vicissitudes 
of a hap-hazard life, the disposition to be continually 
gnawing something remains unchanged. There is 
no more formidable array of ivory than his, and his 
greatest delight is ever to have something rancid 
between his teeth. 

There is a distant collateral branch of this exten- 
sive family, which has been for ages noted for the 
artistic and incomparable roguery of all its members. 
The first beast with which a child becomes acquainted 
is the fox. He has, since that far dawn of intelli- 
gence in which illustration became, as it is still, the 
chief means of teaching, illustrated more pretty 
fables than all other beasts. He has beautified more 
stories and picture books, and employed more artis- 
tic skill. In reality he possesses but one advantage 
over the coyote, and that consists in his proverbial 
swiftness of foot. His brush is no bigger or bushier, 
and his coat no grayer or thicker. Probably neither 
of these rivals in the science of thievery can lay any 
great claim to personal beauty, and, considering his 
want of speed, the coyote is the better beast of the 
two, in the particular industry in the pursuit of 
which they are both distinguished. 



214 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

Upon tlie great plains of the Southwest, and in 
the mountains of New Mexico, one is sometimes 
puzzled to know where a beast so wanting in ferocity 
and so slow of foot can possibly obtain his daily 
provender. The truth is that he has to live by his 
wits. jS^o one ever saw a starved coyote. He does 
not confine himself to any particular diet, and wher- 
ever he may wander or rest he is evidently always 
intent upon his next meal. He would greatly dis- 
tinguish himself in that ancient industry, the robbing 
of hen-roosts and the abduction of domestic fowls, 
only there are none in his dominion to steal. But 
he is not discouraired, and does not abandon his 
profession on that account. He has tlie Chinaman's 
epicurean fancy for birds' nests, and follows the 
mountain quail to her bundle of twigs, and daintily 
laps the inner sweets of a dozen eggs, and retires 
like a man from a free lunch, slyly wiping his chops 
with his tongue. In the dead hours of the night he 
creeps upon the covey resting in the coarse grass, 
their tails together and their heads beneath their 
wings, and even the wary old whistler who leads his 
interesting family daily over the intricate miles of 
their habitat himself dozing, and throwing his 
sprawling forepaws suddenly over as many as he 
can, leaves the rest to whirr screaming away in the 
darkness, and learn from him a lesson in family 
vigilance for the future. 

The jackass rabbit, doomed to fame partly on 
account of his grotesque auricular development, but 
also because of his beady eyes, his supposed foolish- 
ness, and his extraordinary swiftness in continual 



COYOTES. 215 



races with the only thing that can keep anywhere 
near him — his own sliado^v, — frequently falls a 
victim to the cunning of this marauder, at whom, 
imder ordinary circumstances, he might be supposed 
to sit upon his hinder legs and smile derisively. 
Jack is sometimes tempted by a damp and shady 
nook to lie upon his back like a squirrel, and, with 
his ears conveniently doubled under him and his 
gaunt legs in the air, to sleep too soundly. Then 
the coyote creeps cautiously upon him, licking his 
lips, and as silent as though his voice had never 
waked the lugubrious echoes. He may be an hour 
in the task, but finally makes a spring not the less 
effective because it is very awkward, and the poor 
rabbit takes subjectively his last lesson in gnawing. 
The virtue of perseverance shines brightly in the 
coyote. All these things require an inexhaustible 
fund of patience. Of course, he fails in many of his 
nefarious designs, but none the less does he try, try 
again. There is a notable instance in which this 
quality alone brings him victory, and that is in his 
contest with the buffalo. In this, since the supply 
of meat must necessarily be large, he makes com- 
mon cause with all his hungry relatives. The old 
bull, after many years of leadership, and after becom- 
ing the father of a horde of ungrateful descendants, 
is finally driven forth by the strong necks and ingrat- 
itude of his younger associates, and ruminates with 
two or three of his own class, retired patriarchs, 
while the herd wanders afar off and forgetful. Then 
the coyotes take him in charge. Wherever he goes 
they follow. He dare not lie down, and weariness 



216 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

helps to overcome him. Finally they begin to har- 
ass him openly, and with increasing boldness A 
gray assassin is upon every hand. The buffalo is 
too imperturbable a brute to succumb to mere bark- 
ing, and his enemies finally begin to bite. The con- 
test may last several days, and be fought over a 
territory many miles in extent. But the old monster 
is worried, crippled, and finally brought down, and 
a snarling feast is begun, which is continued until 
the last bone is picked bare. The beef is none of 
the best, but our friend is content with substantial 
blessings. 

But all the coyote's other modes of obtaining a 
livelihood are mere by -play to the great business of 
his life, which is stealing. For a long time it has 
been supposed that a cat approaching the cream-jar, 
and a weasel intent upon coveted eggs, were the 
ideals of sly cunning and predatory silence. But it 
is time our coyote should have his due ; and there 
is no doubt that, in the exercise of a preternatural 
talent for silent appropriation, he excels all the 
sharp-smelling and light-footed night-wanderers. He 
has a curious penchant for harness, rawhide, boots, 
thongs, saddles, and old leather generally. He 
gnaws the twisted raw-liide lariat from the pony's 
neck, and bodily drags away the saddle and chews 
it beyond recognition by the owner. He enters the 
open barrack window, and steals the accoutrements 
from the soldier's bed-side and the shoes from under 
the bed. He will walk backward a mile, and draw 
after him a raw-hide that is dry and juiceless as a 
board. It would seem that he did not all these 



COYOTES. 217 



eccentric things for the sake of food alone. In the 
majority of instances, the articles are beyond masti- 
cation even by a coyote's tireless jaws. He steals, 
as men do, because he is a born thief. He is greatly 
gifted in every accessory of his chosen profession. 
In the olfactory sense he is a phenomenon. The 
savory odor of the camp-fire frying-pan reaches him 
at an inconceivable distance. With drooping tail 
and abject head, he comes stealthily near like a wil- 
derness phantom, and his appearance in the dark- 
ness is the very picture of treachery. He is patient, 
and will not be driven far, but sits down a hundred 
yards away, he and all liis kin, and invests the 
encampment, and longingly licks his lips, and waits. 
Ere long, the little bright fire, that is like a glow- 
worm in tlie wide darkness, and the tired, lounging 
figures around it, are surrounded by a cordon of 
patient, harmless, hungry thieves, who lick their 
jaws and faintly whine in expectation. 

These are the times, and only these, when the 
coyote is silent. Upon all other occasions his voice 
is his pride and glory, and he sits upon his tail, and 
throws back his head in the ecstasy of discord, and 
gives it to the wind and the night in a rapid succes- 
sion of discordant yelps which seem ceaseless for 
hours together. Indeed, tlie coyote's bark is the 
prominent feature of night in the wilderness. To 
one unaccustomed to it, sleep is impossible. In 
spite of the knowledge of the brute's cowardice and 
general harmlessness, it is impossible to banish rest- 
lessness and some feeling of fear. After the fire 



218 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

dies out, as the sleepless and discordant hours pass, 
you long for morning and peace. 

Coyotes and Indians are supposed to be on good 
terms always. Thev are somewliat alike in general 
characteristics, and have a supposed mutuality of 
interests. Thev both object to the invasion of the 
white man, and both are contemporary occupants of 
a country that cannot long remain tlie home of 
either. But the coyote's dislike to the invader 
seems to be only an unreasonable prejudice, for he 
has been furnished more feasts upon the carcasses of 
causelessly-slaughtered buffaloes in a single year 
than the Indian would have given him in ten. 

But our gray-coated friend makes a near approach 
to respectability in one item : he is a creature of 
family, for whom he duly provides. Any morning 
in early spring, upon some dry knoll, may be seen 
three or four little dun-colored stupid-looking cubs, 
lazily enjoying the warmth. At the slightest alarm 
they tumble, with more alacrity than gracefulness, 
into tlie mouth of the den, from wdiich they never 
wander far, and many hours patient digging will 
not u-nearth them. Xot far away may be seen the 
mother, uneasily watching the course of the intrud- 
er's footsteps. But provision for the support of a 
family is not carried so far as it is with the foxes. 
There are but few delicate morsels carried to the 
den, and the adolescent thief must mainly subsist 
upon his mother's scanty udders until he has 
attained his teeth and his voice, when he is launched 
upon the wilderness world fully equipped by nature 
and instinct for the practice of all the variations of 



CO TO TBS. 219 



music and theft, and to follow in the disreputable 
ways of all his ancestors. 

He is a brute who is entitled to respect for his 
very persistent and professional course of knavery. 
He understands his business, and follows it. He 
makes a success of it. Contemptible in body and 
countless in numbers, he forages fatness from things 
so despised of all others that he becomes almost a 
producer upon the just plan of cooperative industry. 
He is utterly careless of the contempt that all other 
beasts seem to feel for him, waiting ft^r his revenge 
for the time of their feebleness and decay. Like all 
cowards, he can fight desperately when he must, 
and there is many an ugly scar of his making. Win- 
ter and summer, in heat and cold, he wags his way 
along the prairie paths with the same drooping, 
quick-turning, watchful head, the same lolling red 
tongue, the same bushy ornament trailing behind, 
ever mindful of a coyote's affairs, ever looking for 
supper, the figure-head, the feature, the representa- 
tive of the wide and desolate country of which he 
comes more nearly being master than any other. 



XII. 

A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAl^. 

IIEUTENAKT CHAELES SMYTHE — Smith, 
-^ all tlie same, but Smvthe looks better in the 
register — was commandant of the post, and unques- 
tioned autocrat of a territory comprising sixteen 
square miles of trap-rock, mesquit^ and sand. But 
supreme authority was never vested in one more 
unappreciative of its privileges and responsibili- 
ties — possibly because he was so seldom called 
upon to exercise his prerogative that he almost 
forgot his distinguished position. Certainly his 
thoughts were very far from all troubles of this 
kind that July morning, as he sat in the inner room 
at the trader's store, sole occupant of the apart- 
ment. There was a round pine table, covered with 
.a red artillery blanket, and the earthen floor had 
been swept away until each leg stood upon a little 
pedestal of earth. Many a game of "poker" had 
been played there, and the small box of "beans" 
still sat upon the cloth ; but the useful piece of fur- 
niture had its sole office at this moment in being 
a rest for the lieutenant's feet. He was trying to 
read a copy of the "Herald," very new in being 
only three weeks old ; but his eyes wandered away 
from the dull columns, through the small window, 
and out upon the foot-hills shimmering in the sun- 

220 



A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 221 

light and the blue Sierras with their streaks of snow. 
The air was heavy with silence. There were no 
bees to hum, and no twittering of small birds added 
cheerfulness to the time. Only occasionally, near 
the spring, the spiritless yellow-breasted and fidgety 
little lark, who seems to be careless of all climates 
between Maine and Texas, sat and swayed upon a 
tall weed. The usual ravens sailed in lazy circles, 
or sat in rows upon the ledges, and sociably croaked 
to each other. And these were the only living 
things. But the commandant was not taking any 
lively interest in these irresponsible denizens of his 
dominion. It is doubtful if he saw them at all, for 
his mind was boozing in one of those inane reveries 
that are the precursors of sleep. The "Herald" 
slipped from his fingers, and a faint wish that it was 
night half developed itself in his indolent head. 
Then, remembering his dignity, perhaps, he roused 
himself enough to yawn, and to remark to the group 
of deliberative ravens that he wished something 
would happen. Whereupon something did happen, 
which, in that dull region, was enough to keep him 
awake for the rest of the day. It was a circum- 
stance wholly unimportant in itself that attracted his 
attention, for it was only the sound of a voice from 
the outer room. Voices are common enough, and 
there has even arisen an opinion that there may be 
upon occasion too much of them. Kearly every 
individual has one of his own, and some of them 
are harsh and some are soft, but each is characteris- 
tic of its possessor. As there are eyes that are 
never deceived in the recognition of a face, so there 



222 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

are ears that remember voices that were lieard casu- 
ally months or years before. Generally such A^oices 
have some marked peculiarity of their own; and 
such was the case here. The tones were low, per- 
fectly polite, and the accent was that of a German 
educated in the English tongue. At first the com- 
mandant listened through the open door, with only 
that degree of interest which attaches to a stranger 
in a locality where strangers are infrequent. Then it 
began to remind him very dimly of something or some 
one more than a thousand miles away. Finally, as 
he sat there with one hand upon the back of his 
chair and the other upon the table before him, and 
in an attitude that indicated a hesitating suspicion, 
the whole scene came to him like a remembered 
dream. Moments accomplish these things in real- 
ity, and they are by no means worked out in the 
dull words it is necessary to use here. The inspect- 
or's office at Fort Leavenworth; the group of officers 
who sat there, and among them, yet far off, the man 
whose voice he seemed now to hear as he heard it 
then, as he stood in the constrained position of 
"attention," his bright black eye and regular fea- 
tures marking him more distinctly from his humble 
position, his concise answers and clear definitions 
imparting information to his superiors, and leaving 
the impression upon the casual visitor that one 
August Stein, private in the 5th U. S. Infantry, 
though but a detailed clerk, was perhaps tlie ablest 
man in the office of the inspector general of the 
Department of the Missouri. But it was not from 
these things alone that the listener remembered the 



A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 223 

man whose voice he thought he heard. It was 
jDartlj from the peculiar look darted after him like 
lightning as he left the room, wliicli, seen again 
under any circumstances, would mark the man. It 
is the look which distinguishes that class of men, of 
which there are fortunately few, who for a sufficient 
stake will face any danger and commit any crime, 
who disdain all law as not meant for them, who may 
even fascinate when they will, and who are the 
Machiavellis of social life. 

And this was undoubtedly the voice of Stein. 
The five years of his enlistment could not have 
expired. His regiment was stationed four hundred 
miles away. Discharged for disability, he would 
hardly come to these ends of the earth for a home, 
and — the gentlemanly soldier was a deserter. This 
was why the commandant listened and hesitated, 
why he doubted if it were not better and more mer- 
ciful to let the soldier go, and keep the secret. For, 
as his mind threaded out the story, he remembered 
all his former impressions of the man, and among 
them that he was one to whom the ranks would be 
insufferable — a humiliation nearly always ended at 
last by the only way possible. As he thought of all 
this in his listening attitude, he nodded his head in 
final certainty, and said as to himself, "I thought 
so — I am not mistaken." 

There was a feeling of regret, not entirely 
acknowledged to himself, that this man's evil genius 
had brought him so near the only one by whom he 
could possibly be recognized. Here was a voice 
betraying its owner at an inconceivable distance 



224 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES, 



from where it had last been heard, and that owner 
entirely ignorant that his unconscious gift was about 
to bring ii}3on him his life's greatest misfortune and 
disgrace. Here, after travel and toil, at this l^st 
stopping-place in the wilderness, with freedom and 
safety in view, were to begin those troubles that 
would probably end in the Tortugas. As the com- 
mandant pondered these things, the voice ceased, 
and he rose and entered the room as the stranger 
turned to go out. A glance lighting into a gleam of 
recognition in the peculiar eyes, and down toward 
the canon, through the sage, Stein was gone like a 
flash, with all the vigor and determination that 
belong to such men. Immediately in front of the 
door stood a train of laden asses, whose burdens 
were baskets, bags, and household utensils. Stand- 
ing near were three or four Mexicans, and mounted 
upon one was a woman whose shawl had fallen from 
her face, and who watched the flight with clasped 
hands and startled manner. These things the com- 
mandant took in at a glance. They were common. 
In this country, no man travelled alone, unless it 
were in some desperate emergency in which safety 
was of secondary importance; and here, he thought, 
were a travelling party in whose company the 
deserter had reached the post. His flight, cause- 
less under any ordinary circumstances, had a 
strange efl"ect upon the girl. Her brown cheeks 
blanched, and as she watched the fast retreating 
figure her eyes had in them a kind of desperate 
look. 

Stein's flight was in full view of the half-dozen 



A GUARD-HOUSE GFWTLE3IA]V. 225 



soldiers who stood beside the sally-port. They 
understood the situation, and at the merest sign 
from the commandant three or four of them were in 
pursuit. The girl slipped from her donkey, and, 
with frantic gestures and a torrent of Spanish, 
attempted to hinder their progress. Almost heed- 
less of her presence, they passed on, and she sat 
upon the ground with covered face, and rocked her- 
self to and fro. Iler companions looked stupidly 
on, and, apparently regardless of either her or the 
fugitive, awaited results. 

In half an hour the deserter had lost in one of 
the most desperate ventures of life, and had taken 
his place in the guard-house among men as des- 
perate and hardened as common crimes and mis- 
fortunes ever phiced in chains together. But before 
lie entered there, the woman, who seemed in some 
degree to have regained her composure, found 
means to come near and speak to him, in Spanish, 
words which the commandant did not hear and no 
one near him seemed to understand. As he list- 
ened, there seemed to come into his melancholy 
face, and to gleam from his black eyes, a new hope 
and purpose. With a glance eloquent of defiance 
and hate, which took in at once the commandant 
and all his minions, the girl turned and was gone. 
The handsome, sinister, defiant face he remembered 
long afterwards in connection with this strange 
scene; and though she watched his footsteps from 
afar, and haunted the purlieus of his command, he 
was ignorant of her presence, and never but once, 
and then under very different circumstances, saw 



226 FRONTIER ARJIY SKETCHES. 

her again. Long afterwards, he knew that she had 
stayed behind ; that slie had taken up her residence 
with the Mexican guide, and that there, with all the 
cunning of her race and more than its faithfulness, 
she had watched and waited. 

The guard-house of a frontier jDost is one of the 
necessary means by which the few control the many. 
It is not a light and airy place. There are no soft 
luxuries and comforts there, and idleness is un- 
known within its grimy walls. Had he been a 
king's son, there was no better place for him; and 
here the unfortunate deserter took up his abode. 
The commandant passed him as he worked among 
the prisoners. In this lonely nook of the desert, the 
guard-house gang, as they sullenly wandered with 
clanking chains wherever there was work to do, was 
always a reminder that even a land that was lacking 
in every feature common to tlie world was not with- 
out its crimes, and not wanting in its means of 
punishment. As he came near, tlie prisoner threw 
aside his broom, and asked permission to speak. 

There was never a soldier who had notliing 
whereof to complain in his best estate, and most 
certainly even a deserter can urge good and person- 
ally satisfactory reasons for the act. This was what 
the commandant expected, and he deemed it wise to 
forestall his prisoner : 

''Are you not a deserter?" said he. 

^^I am, but—" 

"Are you not aware that desertion, according to 
the law under which you voluntarily placed yourself, 
is not ;i remedy for wrong and admits of no excuse ?" 



A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLE3IAN. 227 

''Certainly, sir, and I do not wish to make any 
excuse. I only wish to show you^ if possible, that 
there was justification, for the sake of your good 
opiniony 

Now, words like these the commandant had never 
heard spoken by one man to another under like cir- 
cumstances. Here was one in the chain-gang, guilty 
by his own confession of a crime that ought to keep 
him there, talking of ''good opinion." The com- 
mandant had not been accustomed to think that an 
officer had any opinion whatever of a private, in or 
out of the guard-house ; and he went away ponder- 
ing the curious case he had gotten upon liis hands — 
a man with the jewelry of crime upon him, still 
claiming respect, and tacitly advancing his claim to 
be regarded as a gentleman by one who also claimed 
that distinction. 

Ere long, the two or three ladies of the small 
garrison began to inquire concerning a very good- 
looking prisoner who had been seen piling wood and 
carrying slops in their back areas. Contrary to 
orders in such cases, savory morsels were passed out 
to him through windows, and dainty meals were 
enclosed in napkins and sent to him. All this the 
commandant saw — and did not see. Nay, more; 
he became convinced that the man who had excited 
so much pity was daily fed from his own table, mucli 
to the envy and dissatisfaction of the other prison- 
ers, and he, the commandant, was so careless that 
he neither saw nor heard. 

By and by it was discovered that the prisoner 
was possessed of great clerical ability, and he wa^ 



228 FRONTIER ARjVY SKETCHES. 

placed in an upper room so constructed that a win- 
dow opened from it through the wall to the outside 
of the post. He was required to make topographical 
drawings and to copy the letters of the post adju- 
tant; and in order that he might be near his work, 
he was allowed to sleep in his room. All night a 
sentinel paced to and fro beneath the window, and 
immediately under him was the guard-room. 

As time passed, little by little his story came 
out, all of which, when it reached their ears, the 
tender-hearted ladies of the garrison did religiously 
believe. Much as his condition had been improved, 
it was a pity (said they) that this much-wronged and 
much-enduring man (who was so interesting and so 
handsome) should still be compelled to wear a ball 
and chain. Feminine bets were freely offered, ten 
to one and no takers, that the prisoner would not, 
and indeed could not, escape. But by this time the 
commandant had received circulars from headquar- 
ters, in which they had been at the pains to print a 
description of the deserter, with especial instructions 
for his apprehens,ion. The ladies could feed and 
pity the unfortunate, but, for a wonder, they did not 
succeed in ridding him of the odious jewelry. This 
was particularly set down against the hard-hearted 
Smythe, who had much to silently endure at their 
hands, and who had seen with what vigor a pretty 
miss of twenty could govern a post, and had known 
whole districts that were, in his private and unex- 
pressed opinion, governed by the commanding offi- 
cer's wife. But, had they only known it, the ladies 
of the garrison need not have troubled their heads 



A (fUAUD-lWVSE OENTLEMAK. 229 

upon til is point. There was another woman cquall}' 
interested in the case, in comparison witli whose 
efforts theirs were as nothing 

Much against his will, the commandant had come 
to know that the prisoner regarded him as his friend. 
He was no thick-headed military machine, who takes 
all things for granted. lie did not say it or act it, 
but it w^as apparent nevertheless, that he entirely 
understood the feeling of leniency, sympathy, or 
whatever it was that had a place in the command- 
ant's mind, close beside his sense of duty and right. 
So interesting a piece of humanity had the deserter 
become, with his skill, his good looks, and his inHu- 
ential friends, that the commandant did sincerely 
wish he had never seen him. But there was at least 
one act of kindness that he thought he could show 
the prisoner with perfect consistency: he could 
counsel him in regard to his approaching trial. One 
day he offered as much, and the deserter showed 
him an elaborate defence to be used on that occasion. 
He had imagined with astonishing acuteness every 
stage of the prosecution. Without access to any of 
the books upon military law, he had remembered 
and used some former study of them with an erudi- 
tion and faculty of arrangement which caused the 
amiable commandant to retire with dignified precipi- 
tancy from the position of volunteer legal adviser. 

By this time Stein had gained a complete ascend- 
ancy over the whole guard-house crew. He was 
their friend, and they his ; and, indeed, the deni- 
zens of the garrison generally had a very tender 
side for him. By some means he became possessed 



230 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

of money. The Mexicans living near, men and 
women, acting as guides and laundresses, passed in 
and out unquestioned and almost unobserved. They 
had always done so, and were regarded as harmless 
and useless people. Sergeants and corporals of the 
guard thought it so small a matter that (me of these 
women should frequently speak with the prisoner, 
that the circuui stance was never even mentioned. 
It was hard indeed, they probably argued, that the 
prettiest and proudest of them all should not be 
allowed to stand sometimes in the cool night below 
his window, and chatter to him in a voice so low 
that even the sentinel could hardly hear, even if he 
could understand. [N'either, surely, was there any 
harm in there being always somebody flitting around 
in the moonlight and watching the prisoner's win- 
dow. She was only foolish, they thought — or 
probably very much in love, which is the same 
thing. 

Smythe did not positively know, but nevertheless 
guessed, that his prisoner meant to escape, and 
might possibly succeed. He had done his whole 
duty; his orders were strict. One day he was by 
chance in the little room where Stein worked and 
slept. Upon the little cracked mantel-piece, in plain 
view, lay a large carpenter's chisel. The command- 
ant took it up, turned suddenly upon Stein, and 
asked him how it came there. "I stole it from 
the shop a month ago, sir," said the undaunted 
prisoner. 

The two men looked at each other, straight in 
the ej^e. "Stein," said the officer, "you are my 



A OUABD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 231 



prisoner, and having caught you I do not intend 
that you shall escape. I laid no trap for you, and 
personally wish you not the slightest harm. ]S"ever- 
theless, I wish you to distinctly understand that I 
mean to keep you. This is an old game, and of 
course I understand it perfectly. Would you like 
to go and sleep upon a board again, and take your 
fare with the fellows below^?" and his eye rested a 
moment upon the prisoner's shackle-rivet. 

The prisoner, standing at "attention," turned 
slightly pale, and his peculiar eye had a look in it 
that the officer returned with one of equal resolu- 
tion. "I understand, sir,'' he said, "it was my 
fate that brought me here, not you. I could have 
gone some time since, and did not. I give you my 
word of lionor that I shall not try to escape while 
you command the post.'' 

It was the first time that Lieutenant Smythe had 
ever been given a "word of honor" by a private 
soldier, much less by a confessed deserter. He 
looked again at his man, laid the chisel — already 
battered upon the edge — down where he had found 
it, and walked out of the place. 

A month passed, and the expected new officer 
came to command the post. The prisoner immedi- 
ately became restless. It was evident to Smythe, 
now no longer responsible, that the gentleman of 
the guard-house contemplated a denouement that 
would somewhat astonish the new commandant. 
Yet he wondered how, in the face of difficulties that 
would have caused most men to calmly submit to 



232 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



evil fate, he intended to remedy liis ills. It hap- 
pened in this wise : 

There came a niglit of wind and storm rare in 
that region. The clouds scndded across the sky in 
quick succession, and the favorable elements of 
noise and darkness were plentifully contributed. 
About midnight, Smythe was awakened by the new 
commandant, and informed with a rueful face that 
the celebrated prisoner had escaped. It was strange, 
he said ; he had given that man a double share of 
vigilance ever since he had been at the post. 

The orders required the guard-corporal to inspect 
the prisoner's room every two hours during the 
night, and in making one of these untimely visits 
the object of so much unappreciated solicitude was 
found to have placed liimself beyond the reach of 
annoyance. The ponderous ball'and chain lay upon 
the floor. The pallet where he had lain was fancied 
to be yet warm. Under the table lay a leaden rivet 
that fitted the hole in the ankle-ring of the discarded 
shackles. It was simple enough — he had dropped 
from the window. 

Upon the mantlepiece lay a battered and heavy 
carpenter's chisel, and with this the prisoner had. 
hammered the head of his shackle-rivet until it had 
been broken ofip and removed. He had then inserted 
the leaden one, made from a musket-ball, and worn 
it in that manner until opportunity came. He was 
gone irrevocably. In these barren hills, on such a 
night, nothing less than the chance that had captured 
him once could take him again, and before the dawn 
he would have safely crossed the Mexican bound- 



A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 233 



ary. But would he have made the desperate ven- 
ture on foot, and witliont a guide l And what of the 
sentinel who walked beneath the window 'i The wall 
was white, and the night was not wholly dark ; why 
had he not been seen or heard? Strangely enough, 
in cases like this the iirst thing, the essential diHi- 
culty, is always the last thing thought of. When 
the sentinel was sent for he was found lying beneath 
the window, limp, silent, dazed, his discarded mus- 
ket lying beneath his hand. '-^ Aguardiente^^'' said 
the reflective Smythe to himself, as he turned away, 
and walked ofl:' to his quarters and his bed more than 
ever regretting the unlucky morning he had uttered 
his wish to the "ravens, of all birds; for, quoth he, 
there are no bars that can confine, no circumstances 
tliat can daunt, the combined forces of brains, un- 
scrupulousness, and love. But Smythe did not say 
much; the following morning he even sat up in his 
bed and smiled to himself as he thought of the 
explanatory letter the other fellow would have to 
write about the escape of the prisoner whose per- 
sonal description was posted in the adjutant's ofiice, 
whose safety the department commander had stated 
he was solicitous of, and who, he was privately glad 
to know, was gone about his aifairs. 

It was almost a year afterward, and Lieutenant 
Smythe seemed to have forgotten the little episode 
of the guard-house gentleman. He had, in fact, been 
ordered elsewhere, and was occupied with new duties 
and surroundings. One of these duties necessitated 
a journey of four hundred miles, from a post upon 
the lower Rio Grande, to Santa Fe, to attend the 



234 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

sessions of a general court-martial. It mattered 
little in the execution of such an order that it was a 
region of uninhabited distances as rugged as they 
were long. There are canons, passes, wild defiles, 
and endless miles of alkali and sage. There are 
Apaches as well, and Mexicans who are reputed no 
better than the copper-colored Ishmaelites who mur- 
der and are never seen. No town or tavern ever 
greets the eye of the tired wayfarer. Camp-fire 
ashes, in little heaps beside the trail, tell him what 
he too must do when night comes. Xo man makes 
the journey alone, and he and liis companions may 
while the time away as best they may, so they be 
but w^atchful. xVnd for the first day there is watch- 
fulness — a vigilance that scrutinizes every movement 
of the gaunt cacti upon the hillsides and hears every 
movement made by quail or rabbit in the sage. The 
second day there is also care, but less of it. The 
way is long, and the thoughts wander, it may be to 
New England, but to the homes and fields of long 
ago wherever they may lie. The third, and all other 
days, are but periods of weariness and of wishing 
one were at his journey's end. There are no In- 
dians; there is nothing but earth, and air, and sky, 
and silence, and that deep monotony that shall 
never be broken by civilization and the uses of man. 
The lieutenant rode alone. Far behind him he 
could hear the clank of sabres and the jingling of 
bridles, and was carelessly satisfied with the near- 
ness of his escort. He was busily thinking, and was 
tired and worn with the eternal vigilance of such a 
journey; tired of his fiire of hard-bread and ham. 



A GUARD-HOUSE GK.\TLEMAX. 235 



coffee and dried beef; tired of himself. Sometimes, 
perhaps, he ahnost slept. Anon a brawling stream 
from the mountain snows crossed his trail, and his 
gray horse stopped to drink. Again the steep rock 
rose above him a thousand sheer feet, and below 
him yawned a chasm black with depth. There were 
glades, too, where the miniature oak, with its bright 
green leaves and its thickly-clustering acorns, gath- 
ered in tangled groves over acres of uncropped 
grass. Yet it was all the same: it was New Mexico, 
with her skies forever blue, her sparkling air, and 
her stony and inhospitable bosom. 

The trail widened ; there were two paths now 
instead of one. The lieutenant did not know how 
long it had been so ; and when he came to think of 
it, had no recollection of how long it had been since 
he had heard the clank of sabres behind him, or 
paid any attention to the nearness of his escort. He 
waited and listened, and all was as silent as chaos. 
He rode back, and his escort was not behind ; for- 
ward, and they did not appear. They were gone in 
the silence, and the officer was alone — and lost. 

But these paths were made by men, and must 
lead somewhere. Smythe was wide awake now, 
and spurred his horse on, he knew not wliither. 
The guide was with the soldiers. "They are not 
lost," he mused; "I am.'' And he rode on, faster 
and faster, as time passed and no sign of humanity, 
known or unknown, appeared. The low sun of the 
afternoon reminded him of the coming of an inhos- 
pitable and supperless night, for the sumpter-mule 
was with the escort also, while he was with the 



236 FRONTIER ARJIl' SKETCHES. 

gnomes and uucoutli fairies wlio inhabit these stunted 
and primeval shades. He had ridden far, how far 
he did not know. The glens were already cavernons 
and black in the shadows, while the slopes and hill- 
tops shone with a yellow glory as of stained glass. 
He knew that he had climbed higher and higher. 
Sometimes, as he looked back, he caught a glimpse, 
through some long canon, of the vast plateau below, 
stretching awav for a hundred miles. Around him 
appeared a new earth. There was water every- 
where, and the herbage was the grass of another 
zone, green and bright with rain and sun. Oak and 
pine stood clustered together in silent parks, with 
mountains still above, and leagues of rock below. 

Smythe stopped and looked about him. Would 
they ever find him ? Could he ever retrace his 
steps ? Did men or did deer make these now innu- 
merable paths ? It was with a feeling approaching 
despair that he sat down upon a bowlder and watched 
the horse greedily crop the grass. Had he not been 
lost he would have been entranced by the scene 
around him. But presently he imagined he heard 
something — a metallic sound, faint and far and 
dim ; a dream of the tinkling of a bell, or a water- 
fall. Intently listening, he was sure he heard it 
again. He rode forward along the glade, and pres- 
ently found a steep incline and a winding road. 
Far down lay a nook in which were clustered some 
little adobe houses. There was a rocky stream 
brawling among its bowlders, and here and there 
moving figures that were not Apaches. Standing 
closely in a huge enclosure there were hundreds of 



.1 GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 237 

sheep, and from among them came at intervals the 
muffled tinkling of their drowsy bells, Smjthe sat 
upon his horse and looked down upon the scene. 
The last red ravs of the sun shone aslant throuofh 
the valley, and tinged with rose-color the gray rocks 
and earthen roofs. Tlie blue smoke lay like a wide 
and fleecy mantle above. The astonished officer 
fancied he could detect the odor of primitive cook- 
ery and hear the sound of voices. A huge brindled 
sheep-dog paused in his journey from house to house, 
stood for a moment looking up the hill at the gray 
horse and his rider, barked, and went his ways 
again. He rode down the steep incline ; and as tlie 
long mountain valley opened before him, he thought 
of Eden and the solitary loves of those two to whom 
it was, like this, all the world. 

It was not strange that Lieutenant Smythe's 
appearance spread consternation through the little 
hamlet. A wonuin saw liim hrst, and darted away. 
A man's swarthy visage appeared around a corner, 
and again disappeared. The dogs stood afar off and 
growled. Presently, however, came one with a 
quick step and unabashed demeanor, and laid liis 
hand upon the horse's rein. 

''It would seem. Lieutenant Smythe/' he said, 
" tliat you and I were fated to meet in strange 
places. Are yoa lost, or a — deserter f 

"I am lost," said Smythe, and he scrutinized 
the face of Stein, as w^mdering if it was necessary 
at last to tight it out upon equal terms. 

'' At any rate, the meeting is an unexpected 
pleasure," said the other, and Smythe was requested 



238 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

to come into the little house, while some one led 
awaj his horse. He found a fire and a seat, but 
also discovered that he was left entirely alone. A 
half hour passed, and a swarthy person brought 
beans, cheese, and meat, and placing them upon the 
little deal-table went away without a word. Drowsy 
and hungry, the officer ate, and afterwards nodded 
in his chair by the fire. No one came, and deep 
silence rested upon all the spot, without and within. 
It was a hospitality that was left him to partake of 
or to leave ; and presently he lay down on the huge 
pile of sheepskins that was evidently meant for a 
bed. 

It was all oblivion to Smythe, until, awakening, 
he knew that some one was placing a rude breakfast 
upon the table. Without, he heard the bleating of 
sheep and the tinkling of bells. The servant retired, 
and he found the earthen water-jar with its attend- 
ant basin, bathed, and again ate. While the sky 
behind the eastern mountains was as yet but a red 
glow, the door was opened, and .his horse stood 
tliere, with a Mexican, who beckoned him to mount 
and follow. As he climbed the hill and looked 
back, the sweet vale lay bathed in sparkling dew, 
the fiocks had disappeared, and the place seemed 
uninhabited. The Mexican with his donkey plodded 
on before, and Smythe, wondering, was fain to 
follow. 

Some rough miles were passed, and suddenly 
Stein was encountered, sitting quietly upon his liorse 
at a place where the trail turned northward. "I 
know," he said, "where your party are. Follow 



A GUARD-HOUSE GENTLEMAN. 239 

this man, and 3'ou will find them/' He paused a 
moment, and added, ''There is a strange story 
between us, of which it is useless to talk. We shall 
in all likelihood not meet again. I was never a 
criminal, and am here in peace after many mistakes 
and misfortunes, — or follies and crimes, as you may 
be pleased to think them. Be so kind as to excuse 
my scant courtesy; it is necessary that I should 
have this much hereafter to myself. If I chose to 
keep yoit a prisoner, do you think they would ever 
find you i No matter ; I gave you my promise 
once, and kept it. Will you return the compliment 
now?" 

"I understand. You and your happy valley 
shall never be molested by my fault. I give you 
my word of honor.'' 

''Adios ; '' and as the officer looked back, he saw, 
disappearing among the low oaks, and for the last 
time, the character who, in all his reminiscences, 
bears the title of ''The Guard-house Gentleman." 



XIII. 
WOMAIvr UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

THERE is a being wlio is the embodiment of 
beauty, gracefulness, kindness, and unaccount- 
able caprice. Wise men spend their lives in a futile 
endeavor to understand her, and die with every 
conception of her incomplete. Slie is at once our 
ideal and our possession. She is with us, but not 
of us. Living our lives, breathing our air, the 
co-subject of all our vicissitudes and sorrows, with a 
thousand others of her own, she has yet a life apart, 
filled with her own thoughts, her own conclusions, 
and her own peculiar opinions. She fills daily our 
sole conception, our full measure of belief, as to 
what a woman ought to be and is. Beside her, 
there is no other creature worthy of the love which 
is her inheritance, or the dignity that comes of uni- 
versal motherhood. She is human, a woman, and 
she never yet came to a conclusion that was logical, 
or formed an opinion she could give a reason for, or 
possessed the remotest conception of abstract justice. 
She reigns, the irresponsible queen of the civilized 
world, with her feet upon our necks ; and we are 
willing she should, the grayest cynic of us all. She 
gives US all there is in this life to give, and all she 
has, and yet keeps a world of her own to herself 
— a world we cannot enter. The gem and glory 

240 



W03IAN UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 241 



of creation, tlie recipient of the profoundest idola- 
try of which the mind is capable, the nearest and 
dearest of all, she jQi lives indescribably apart, and 
radiates an essence that is to ns like the faintest 
glimmer of the farthest star. With the passage of 
centuries she has added to her own loveliness, until 
she has no comparative in the Rose of Sharon, no 
peer in tlie white Lily of the Yalley. Were it 
but known that in tlie hereafter she would not be 
changed, and would welcome us there with the 
smiles and tears that beguile us here, the hopes of 
mankind would take new directions, and the milen- 
nium, when it came, would be but an unimportant 
event. 

And yet no creature is so entirely susceptible to 
surrounding influences, to the strong teachings of 
nature, wildness and loneliness, to rough associations 
and uncouth companions, yet still preserving the 
distinctive characteristics that belong to sex rather 
than to race. The women we know and daily see, 
whom it is a part of our religion to respect and a 
part of our lives to love, are only typical women — 
specimens of the grade of beauty and refinement 
attainable under the highest form of civilization. 
There are thousands of others, worthy and womanly 
in their way, wlio are not as these. ]N"ay, our ideals 
are scarcely even in the majority. 

There are many rough and honest men, whose 
faces are brown and bearded and whose hands are 
hard with toil, who have jiever even seen the grace- 
ful creatures whose white shoulders gleam through 
tulle, whose footsteps patter upon errands of extrav- 
IG 



242 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

agance over every paved street, and whose faces 
bloom ill rows at tlie theatre. There are unfortu- 
nates in whose early recollections are not included 
the ineffably genteel whisper of the matronly silk, 
as it passed up the church aisle on Sunday morning 
in the decorous company of fair broadcloth and a 
gold-headed cane. To this man, the being who 
blushes at the mere mention of an indelicacy, whose 
hair is indeed a "glory," whose jDalms are pink, 
whose garments are a wonderful triumph of mind 
over cloth, whose movements are tempered with 
gracefulness, and whose very language is the result 
of culture until worn platitudes are sweet upon lier 
tongue, is one so far off that he would scarcely 
picture her in his dim imaginings of angels. 

But he has his companion, like him, and emi- 
nently suited to liim. In his home, and to accom- 
pany him in his wanderings along the frontier, he 
needs no other. ^Neighbor she has none. Of the 
crowded street, and the jam and jostle of pavements, 
she knows nothing. Her amusements are lonely, 
her occupations homely and masculine. All she has, 
and most that she hopes for, may be included in the 
dull routine of one room, one hearth, one changeless 
scene. Life to her is the rising and the setting sun, 
the changing seasons, the cloud, the wind, the frost, 
and the falling rain. She knows the tricks of horses, 
the straying of the herd, and all the economy of the 
corral. Business to her is the small traffic of the 
trading-post. Strangers are those who occupy the 
white-tilted wagons which she sees come and go on 
the far horizon. Friends are all those who have 



WOMAA'^ UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 24; 



white faces and Christian names, and enemies those 
wliose faces slie seldom sees and who are tlie wily 
and inveterate foes of all her race. Of such as slie, 
the denizens of cities know but little ; and she 
deserves a historj^ because of her very isolation. 

Wherever the frontiersman has occupied a place 
in Western annals, his wife has stood in the back- 
ground. The women of the plains, of Colorado, of 
Arkansas, and of Texas, are of the same genus with 
the women of the Wabash and the Missouri, only 
with differing surroundings, ^one of them are of 
the class of the '^pinej-woods" maiden, whose life, 
appearance, and general character became known to 
us through the veracious narratives of Sherman's 
'^bummers." But the men who write of Buffalo- 
land, who wind off narratives of Western life for 
trans-continental newspapers and magazines, or who 
verbally detail to a knot of listeners their Othello- 
like adventures, have little to say of the daughters 
of the wilderness. The sun-burned and slip-shod 
woman who hunts cows in the creek "bottoms" 
upon a bare-backed mustang, who folds her hands 
behind her at the cabin door, and in a shrill voice 
gossips with the passing stranger, and whose careless 
cookery furnishes forth a bill of ftxre as changeless 
as time, does not figure largely in the overdone 
stories of the romance of the frontier and the adven- 
ture of the border. 

Why should she? Her precise pattern in these 
respects still lingers amid encroaching fields in the 
ague-haunted fens of the Wabash and amid the 
brown sand of the Missouri bottoms. But there are 



244 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



other and more remarkable characteristics pertain- 
ing to the woman of tlie far West. She is there, not 
from carelessness and ignorance of any better place, 
but from necessity. Her surroundings are not those 
of choice, but of what is nearly allied to misfortune. 
Indolence and innate untidiness are not the causes 
of her poor larder and her comfortless home. 
There is no broad line drawn between her and 
thrifty and prosperous neighbors. For hundreds of 
miles there are no more comfortable and prosperous 
homes than her own ; and, with a patience that 
might have a touch of sublimity were it not so nearly 
unconscious, she waits for better things. And when 
these better things come, if they ever should, when 
population and prosperity encroach too near, then, 
following the instinct of migration, for God's pur- 
poses, as strong in humanity as in the beasts, she 
and her husband will move again. The grotesque 
procession of lean and melancholy cows, multitu- 
dinous and currish dogs, rough men and barefoot 
girls, and, lastly, the dilapidated wagon, with its 
rickety household goods, wends never eastward. 

The sod house of western Kansas, the cabin of 
Texas, and the adobe of Colorado, are not all so 
fortunate as to have a female mistress. The fact is 
proclaimed afar oif by an essential difference in 
appearance. There was never yet a lonesome bor- 
derer who planted a vine or draped a window or 
swept the narrow path in front of his door. Men 
seldom do such things, while the virtues of good 
housewifery are, in a greater or less degree, the 
natural qualifications of every woman. In many a 



W03IAN UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 245 



wilderness nook, the blooming plant that is cher- 
ished beside the door, the drapery of the one small 
window, the clean-swept hearth, the row of shining 
.tins, and the small evidences of needle-and-thread 
industry, proclaim that however poor the place may 
be, if it hold a woman her hand will still find some- 
to do in the way of adornment. 

There is nothing strange in the fVict that tlie 
Indian squaw is always a slave. Yet the savage 
goes but little further in that direction than Ids 
enemy the frontiersman. In all times, races, and 
circumstances in whicli crudity and toil prepon- 
derate over ease and refinement, woman bears the 
burden of the misfortune. But the rule of compen- 
sation exists everywhere. The sun and the wind 
are kinder than are late hours and furnace-heated 
chambers. The slavery of the field is infinitely 
more conducive to strengtli and happiness than the 
slavery of tlie corset and the high-heeled shoe. 
Maternity is not a terror and a peril to the woman 
of the border. Life, with all its hardship and isola- 
tion, gives her at least all it has to give. The days 
may be days of toil, but the noon brings its hunger 
and health, and the night its deep sleep of rest and 
peace. That wearying round of ceremony, that 
daily attendance upon the mirror and weekly inves- 
tigation of the foshion-plates, that thought of Mrs. 
Smith's bonnet and Mrs. Brown's children, and the 
bank-account and the milliner's prices, — all the un- 
seen and untalked of, yet^ wearisome and monoto- 
nous burdens of fashionable life, are here unknown. 
And the compensation is great. Untrammelled by 



246 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

stays and ceremonies, tlie border woman has what 
few of her sex but her entirely possess — health. 
Not a fictitious and deceptive rosiness of cheek and 
gracefulness of carriage, not whiteness of hands and 
willowy slenderness of waist, but rude, awkward, 
brawny health. The women who, all over the 
eastern United States, are the chief adornment of 
beautiful homes, and the wives and daughters of 
what are called, by way of general designation, 
Christian gentlemen, who cause mankind daily to 
forget Eden and Eve and never to think of the fall, 
and who are the mothers of daughters as brilliant as 
June roses and who fade like them, and of sons who 
are men at twenty and old and hlasd at forty, are 
not expected to credit all this, or to have the slight- 
est desire for an exchange of circumstances, which 
to them would be impossible. The facts are only 
mentioned to show that the pity for those who live 
thus is often misplaced, and that there is no circum- 
stantial misfortune that has not also its reward. 

I know of no woman inhabiting the border wil- 
derness who has not some of the refinement that 
belongs rather to sex than to race, except the Indian 
squaw. A woman whose face bears evidence of a 
relationship with any of the dominant races of the 
world, has something about her, wherever you find 
her, that is more or less womanly and attractive. 
The borderer's wife does not swear, or chew tobacco, 
or offer the least suggestion of indelicacy in action 
or word. She is "green,'' constrained, and often 
awkward ; but her face is not more coarse, or more 
incapable of that surging rosiness that is the tat- 



WOIIAN UNDUE DIFFICULTIES. 247 



tling index to a woman's thought, than any other. 
If I may be allowed to coin a phrase, I would say 
that the standard of delicacy by which her sensibili- 
ties were governed was a different and broader. one 
than that in common use. She associates witli men, 
and ratlier coarse ones. She is intimately acquainted 
with them, and interested in all their affairs. She 
is accustomed to wiklness and danger, and learns to 
be strong of hand and nerve, and cool in sudden 
emergencies. It may be set down to her credit 
that, while she will run if she can, she will also 
fio-ht if she must. Yet there are no circumstances 
that can ever entirely divest a woman of her essen- 
tial femininity. I have been amused to note that a 
woman who was complete mistress of a recalcitrant 
mustang, and every day brought him under subjec- 
tion by a by-no-means-dainty application of the end 
of his lariat, and who ruled with a high hand all the 
hard-headed and sulky denizens of the corral, would 
utter the little cry of her sex and ingloriously 
retreat at the sight of one of the harmless little 
lizards who infest the prairie paths of the South- 
west. 

In society, women dress for women ; in certain 
other walks in life, they dress for men ; and left 
alone, they dress for themselves. The story of the 
first garment, made out of the world's fresh green 
leaves, tells only a part of the story. Here on the 
border, the old business of the sex — to look pretty 
— receives as much attention as it does anywhere. 
There is not much choice of material, — calico is the 
article. Valenciennes and Mechlin, and all the 



248 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

cunning variations in name and material which 
make up the lexicon of the modern drv-goods clerk, 
even the cant about "chaste" colors and "pretty" 
styles, are utterly unknown to the belle of the 
border. As she tilts back in a hide-bottomed chair 
like a man, it is easy to perceive that feet that are 
not always coarse are encased in brogans constructed 
with a special view to tlie roughness of wayside 
stones, the penetrating quality of early dew, and the 
gravity and persuasiveness of kicks administered by 
them. The neck, sunburned, but not always want- 
ing in due proportion and natural whiteness, is igno- 
rant of collar or confinement. Waist and limb are 
untrammelled by any of the devices wdiich are sup- 
posed to be so necessary to style ; and tlie hair, 
combed straight and smooth, is twisted into a tight 
little knot behind, which, as compared with the 
composite mysteries that within the memory of 
people still fashionable were carried about beneath 
the bonnets of our wives, remind one of a small 
wooden knob. In the frontier toilet there is some- 
times a lack of the two essentials of starch and 
snowy whiteness. Cleanliness there is, to be sure ; 
but it is a cleanliness of material and fact, and fails 
in any. suggestion of daintiness. It is upon the use- 
ful and inexpensive calico mentioned that the efforts 
of feminine taste are mostly expended. There are 
ruffles, and bias strijDes, and flounces, and a liun- 
dred pretty and fantastic devices that it is beyond 
masculine technology to describe. Yet, there are 
no prescribed fashions for these vagaries in dress. 
Each woman expends her ingenuity according to 



WOMAN UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 249 

her ideas of bea-uty. The style of a calico gown 
may seem a small item in describing the character- 
istics of a class, but the adornment is so universal 
that it becomes a noticable feature. It is infinitely 
to her credit, too, being the evidence that barbarism 
is not tlie result of hopeless seclusion, and that taste 
and care will hold a place in the hearts and efforts 
of such women in their struggle with wildness, until 
that time shall come in which civilization shall com- 
plete her task. 

If anything thus far should lead to the impres- 
sion that comeliness, not to say beauty, is impossible 
to the women of the border, that impression needs 
correction. Under the severest tests, the frontier 
often has a comeliness of its own. It is not the 
paltry prettiness of gait and manner to which so 
many of our queens are deeply indebted ; not the 
charm of soft words and cultKired address. These, 
indeed, make us sometimes imagine beauty where 
there is none, and procure gentle thoughts and hus- 
bands where there is little else to recommend. 
Frontier charms, where they exist at all, make 
models of stalwart and untrained grace. Health 
itself is beauty, and that unfasliionable kind is com- 
mon enough. It were well if absolute ugliness 
everywhere were the result only of age, hardship, 
and decay, and it is pleasant to think that at least 
here youth seldom wants its round curves and its 
crimson glow. There are border-women whose hair 
falls in troublesome abundance and will not be con- 
fined ; whose cheeks, if they could know immunity 
from the hot caresses of the sun and the boisterous 



250 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

kisses of the wind, would show the clearest white 
and tlie bonniest bloom. There are limbs that 
shuffle slip-shod along the trails in search of lost 
animals, of whose round strengtli the owner lias 
little thought, and arms that split firewood and 
bring water from the spring, whose whiteness and 
mould would fit them rather for the adornment of 
golden clasps and folds of ancient lace. To see 
these women is to know that the old-time talk about 
''unconscious beauty'' is a fallacy. The conscious- 
ness of beauty, and due appreciation and use of it, 
is its great aid in tlie absolute enslavement of man- 
kind. Was there ever the plienomenon of a pretty 
woman who did not know it? As for men, there 
are thousands of them who, being fantastically 
homely, believe themselves to be reproductions of 
the Apollo Belvidere. 

For so long have women been accused of an 
inborn love of gossip, that mankind, in their haste 
to accept ill-natured doctrines, are ever ready to 
concede the truth of the statement that she cannot 
live without it. I am satisfied that, in some poor 
way, she can manage to get along without a next 
door neighbor. It is stranger still that when, by an 
extraordinary chance, the cabins of two neighbors 
are in sight of each other, the fact seldom adds any- 
thing to the happiness of the two female occupants. 
Do they often see each other ( Do they waste 
kisses when they meet ? Are they inseparable 
friends ? There is not a surplus of any of these 
things. Two women, here as elsewhere, with no 
third party to divert attention, are not apt to love 



\VOJIA^^ UNDUE DIFFICULTIES. 251 

each other with fervor. What is better, they do not 
pretend to. But neighborship bears a broad mean- 
ing in these regions. The chronicle of Jones's wife's 
aifairs is reasonably well kei)t by Thompson's wife, 
who lives ten or twenty miles away. And this 
without any of the facilities for what is usually 
termed gossip. The wayfarer wIk^ has lost a pony, 
or who wanders in search of straying cattle, is the 
disseminator of most valuable items of neighbor- 
hood news. As he sits on his horse in front of the 
door, with his knee on the pommel and his chin in 
his palm, he relates how he has "heerd" so and so. 
And in return the dame delightedly tells of her own 
affairs, — the "old man's" luck, the measles, the 
"new folks," etc., etc., and always ends with "Tell 
Mis' Jones to come over." These things, and more, 
the result of his own acute observations, the simple 
cow-hunter tells to "Mis' Jones." But that lady 
does not usually "come over." That is a mere 
forui, gone through with for politeness' sake. Some- 
times she may come, but not for the visit's sake. 
Here, as elsewhere^ there are mysterious gatherings 
in the middle of the night, and the cry of infancy is 
heard in the morning. If it were not for their 
babies, these curious "neighbors'' would probably 
never have any other acquaintance than that which 
comes about by proxy. 

The life of the woman of the frontier, while in its 
nature transient, seems at the same time to be that 
to which she was born. She and her male compan- 
ion never think of that fact, and are themselves 
unconscious of the wandering instinct that brought 



253 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

them hither, and that is the characteristic of the 
class to which they belong. If they were placed in 
an Eden, they would never wait to be thrust out by 
an angel with a flaming sword, and would be anxious 
to go of themselves, satisfied of the existence of a 
better country. But the spot they leave never again 
returns to native wildness ; while there they have 
accomplished a certain purpose as the forerunners 
and vedettes of civilization. Their home was the 
wilderness, and they came next after the savage as 
occupants. Slowly they creep up the valley of the 
Arkansas, already growing too tame for them with 
its two hundred thousand lately-gathered people. 
The twinkle of their camp-fires sparkles upon the 
verge of the desert, wherever in the solitude men 
may abide or human hope can find a foothold. Past 
the utmost of the western forts, over a road that 
stretches like a path through hundreds of miles of 
barren silence, they straggle toward Arizona and 
far-ofi" realms of which, as yet, they neither know 
nor wish to know anything. Everywhere, in scat- 
tered nooks and in sheltered corners, are located 
the rude homes where they have stranded, and 
where they await a return of the migratory deter- 
mination. Each home is the centre of those sur- 
roundings and appliances which are the absolute 
necessities of existence. But they make no better 
homes. Without knowing it, they did not come to 
stay ; and as they repeat the old story of a better 
country beyond, they do not know that, with a 
different meaning and in another sense, they tell 



WOMAN UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 253 



not only their own, but the story of wandering, 
restless, longing humanity everywhere. 

Thus does woman take her part in a most unex- 
pected place in the struggle of life. It is not an 
unimportant one. She brings into the world a con- 
stant levy of recruits, to be trained in infancy to 
wandering, if naught else. It is not an extravagant 
statement to say that without her the final accom- 
plishment of the end for whicli isolation, wildness, 
and poverty are endured, could not be attained. In 
that which we, with a degree of egoism, call life, 
she occupies but a poor place. Her character, her 
ideas of things, and the incidents of her daily life, 
are so far from the absorbing interests which occupy 
the citizens of the great world of churches, schools, 
banks, gas-light, and society, that they are scarcely 
the subjects even of curiosity. But she is still a 
woman, and an example of the capacities of her sex 
in the exercise of that virtue which, more than any 
other, is characteristic of woman — the virtue of 
silent endurance. If her hard life on the far border 
lacks idyllic interest, and needs, to cover its hard 
outlines, the purple garment of romance and poetry, 
it is a compensating reflection that with its uncon- 
scious purpose it still goes on, and tliat, with the 
carelessness of all her kind, she reciprocates the 
indiflerence of the world. 



XIY. 
THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 

THE town of El Paso del ^orte is a bright gem 
upon a green ribbon of fertility between frown- 
ing mountains. The green velvet ribbon is the valley 
of the Rio Grande, and El Paso is the jewel that lies 
upon it. Such, at least, is its description as set 
down in the chronicles of the fathers. 

This important point in the Mexican empire was 
no longer young when Cincinnati was a hamlet in 
the wilderness and St. Louis was a French trading- 
post ; Indiana a beech-grown wilderness, and Illinois 
a wide and inhospitable jungle of tall grass. Then 
the Conestoga wagons carried the trade of the 
young city of William Penn to the valley of the 
Ohio, and the waiting heart of a continent lay 
unheard of and uncared for, biding its time amid 
dense forests, and mighty rivers that crawled for 
thousands of leagues through an endless world of 
silence. The three generations that had already 
lived and died in El Paso had not cared for these 
things, or even heard of tliem. The priest, in his 
gown and hat, went his waj^s in the streets, and the 
laden donkeys stood in tlie market-place. The 
immediate descendants of a people who had brought 
with them across the sea at least their primitiveness 
and content, passed their days then, as now., forget- 

254 



THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 255 



ting and forgot by all the woi'ld. Then, as now, the 
days were days of sunshine and the nights were 
nights of stars. The rich grape-clusters ripened in 
the yellow rays, and the wine-vats gave forth their 
odors through court-yard doors, as the blood-red 
juice mellowed and grew rich within, and crept 
through chinks and grain-holes, and lay in odorous 
pools upon the Hoor. And the church was there as 
now ; the same in its barbaric attempt at magnifi- 
cence, only the huge cedar beams of the roof were 
not then covered with a gray mould, and the central 
arch had not sunk and cracked until its keystone 
hung perilously in its niche. The brown sandstone 
slabs in the yard tell us all that, as we read, in tlie 
ancient and half-effaced characters, of the Dons and 
Seiioras who, in the Year of Grace 1700, and there- 
after, went to their rest in the peace of God. 

But least of all things did these good people 
suspect what their grandchildren should live to see. 
The Jesuit himself, best judge of the course of empire 
and sage j^i'ophet of political changes as he is, did 
not imagine that one day the boundaries of an infant 
republic would widen until, within sight of his church 
and within 'hearing of his chanting, and only upon 
the opposite shore of the river his brethren had dis- 
covered, should arise a Yankee town, named after a 
great mechanic who was also a lawgiver and sage, 
and not less a heretic and an unbeliever ; and that 
yet a little further, and still within sight, should 
float in his own sunshine that silken, sheeny, starry 
thing, the emblem of free men and a free faith. 
Still less did he imagine that most fateful af all the 



256 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

invasions of his faith and of Mexico — the iron track 
that narrows and glistens afar to the northward, the 
rushing engine that scorns liis narrow ford, and the 
unearthly howl that echoes through the canons that 
were sacred to primeval silence. 

It was seventy years ago. But the old man with 
whom the two strangers talked did not tell them of 
the changes between seventy years ago and now. 
Those seven fateful decades were not on his thoughts, 
and not in the story he told. But his long white 
beard and thin and scattered locks and shrunken 
limbs suggested it; and as he seated himself in the 
leathern-bott(nned chair, its cedar framework pol- 
ished and black with age and use, they were the 
words he used as a beginning: "Sevent}^ years ago, 
Caballeros, — seventy years." 

It was a curious chamber in which they sat. The 
walls were high and mouldy, and the cobwebbed 
ceiling was far up in shadow. The one tall window 
had lost all its glass except a few of the lower panes, 
and the cotton cloth that supplied its place fluttered 
as the autumn night-wind wandered through. By 
this dilapidated window they had first seen the inte- 
rior ; for, wandering through the rambling streets at 
midnight, one is curiously attracted by a light which 
has no companion in all the silent town, and which 
burns dimly in the narrow window of a crumbling 
ciiurch. Standing upon the grass-grown walk beside 
the wall, they had seen within a tall figure, upon 
whose shoulders lay the thin white hair, and who, 
prone upon the earthen floor, stretched his attenu- 
ated arms toward the Mother of Sorrows in suppli- 



THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 257 

catiun that was rigid, silent, pitiful. He was alone. 
The lamp smoked in its bracket upon the wall, ai:d 
the small flame in the little fire-place served but 
to throw grotesque shadows through the narrow 
space. Tlie star-lit darkness enfolded the old town 
in a shadowy cloak. The door-lights were put out, 
the last guitar was silent, and the far peaks seemed 
to guard in the darkness a scene strange enough to 
unaccustomed eyes at noonday, and sombre, silent, 
and mysterious at midnight beneath the stars. 

They were strangers ; it was their business to 
learn. Who could he be that prayed so long and 
silently i Presently he rose up and passed out into 
the body of the church, and a moment afterward the 
bell upon the gable rang a few sonorous strokes. At 
the sound in the stillness some sleeper may have 
turned in his bed and uttered his shortest prayer, 
and turned again to sleep. To go around and walk 
up the aisle of graves, and stand in the open door, 
was something which, prompted by the curiosity of 
youth, was soon done. The old man stood there, 
the bell-rope still in his hand, cautiously listening. 
They could not tell if there was surprise in his eyes 
as they entered, but it was a courteous tone in which 
he bade them wait where they stood. They heard 
his slow footsteps as he went back through the 
darkness. Presently he came again, the lamp held 
above his head, peering through the gloom 

"Would you pray, seiiors ? " said he, in the 
piping treble of age. They told him they came not 
to pray, but to talk. He hesitated a moment 
between doubt and courtesy, and then, bidding 



258 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

them follow, led the way over the hard earthen 
lioor, past the altar-rail, at wliich he bent his 
decrepit knees, by images wliose faces had a ghostly 
look in the dim lamplight, and into the room wliich 
seemed his chamber, and where they had seen him 
as he prayed. 

He turned to them with a gesture that liad in it 
a mixture of courtesy and irony, waved his hand 
around the room as if to say, ''Here it is, — look," 
and seated himself in tlie one old chair and gazed 
into the dying lire. The place had a faint mouldy 
smell, and that suggestion of falling gradually into 
extreme age that is difficult to describe. The 
earthen floor was worn until it was as hard and 
smooth as stone. Upon one side were presses 
whose doors had parted from hinge and hasp, and 
whose panels dropped away piecemeal, and within 
them were to be dimly seen glimpses of yellow 
linen, and scarlet vestments, and faded and tar- 
nished lace. There was surely nothing there that 
was worth a question; and as the old sacristan — for 
such seemed to be his office — still sat with his back 
toward them, looking at the glowing coals, they 
asked him none. 

But in the midst of mouldiness and decay one 
small object attracted attention, from its seeming 
freshness. Against the wall, and immediately be- 
neath a crucifix, was a frame of dark wood, some 
four feet long and about twelve inches wide. It 
shone with frequent polishing, and within it hung a 
curtain of green cloth. It might have passed unno- 
ticed save for a suggestion of concealment and that 



THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. i^o9 

these two minds were more intent upon discovery 
than a strict regard for politeness. The}^ were 
there to see, and shoiikl thev not know what lurked 
behind that small green curtain^ It mattered little, 
perhaps, but as one of them touched its corner witli 
his finger the aged man rose up with a polite depre- 
cating gesture, at which thej stood ashamed. He 
took the lamp from its place and trimmed it afresh. 
Contrary to all expectation there was interest and 
pleasure in his eyes as he approached the panel 
with the lamp in his hand, and tenderly raised the 
curtain. ''Look," said he; "the hand that made 
it was a cunning one. He who painted those lines 
was a great artist — one of the greatest of his times; 
but none will ev^er know it. In the old land across 
the sea are great paintings, and the names of the 
makers of tliem are immortal. Yet he whose hand 
made this was as great as they. He and they might 
have worked together and you might know who I 
mean — which is not possible. You do not know; 
you will never know. There were few who did, and 
they are dead. There is nothing left but this — only 
this poor thing. Ah, he was a poet, an artist, rich, 
and a grandee. He was as handsome as a god and 
as learned as a sage. And this is left, sefiors; there 
is nothing else.'' 

Whatever opinion either of them had formed of 
the old man, they were undoubtedly mistaken in it. 
His eyes had lighted with a new hre as he spoke. 
He was not the peasant and churl they thought him, 
and no one need have been mistaken who now saw 
the animated look in his keen old eyes, his clearly- 



260 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

cut and once handsome features, and the lithe figure 
that even in age seemed rather of the camp and the 
sword than of the bell and gown. 

When one in the guise of a peasant descants 
upon art, the piece named ought certainly to attract 
a moment's attention. The carefully-covered speci- 
men within the frame was a piece of vellum, dried 
and horny with age, on which W'as traced in colors 
wdiich had lost none of their brilliancy a single 
Latin sentence. The head-letters had about them 
all the intricate and graceful beauty of the old art 
of illumination, and in elaborateness of design, 
brilliancy of coloring, and gracefulness of detail, 
the work was that of no unaccustomed or unskilful 
hand. 

But as the strangers scanned the picture — for 
picture it might really be called, — the words them- 
selves seemed remarkable. There was a meaning 
and purpose in them, and in the place they occu- 
pied. The legend ran thus : 

"ET NE ME INDUCES IN 

TENT A TI0NE3I, 

SET) LIBERA 3IE A MALO." 

'•Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from 
evil." It was only a sentence from that immortal 
form of prayer wdiich has been sent upward by 
millions of hearts for these eighteen hundred years, 
the essence and meaning of all supplication. ''Lead 
me not into temptation''; why w^as it written here, 
where the world seemed shut out, even without a 
cf'll and a priest's vows? 



THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 261 

"If these words have a history, father, and the 
man you speak of made them, will you not tell us 
the story?" asked one of them. 

There are two conditions in which age delights: 
one is silence, the other, extreme garrulity. The 
aged man, be he soldier, statesman, or priest, lives 
mainly in the past. When he is silent he thinks, 
not of what he shall do and accomplish and be, as 
he did when he was young, but of what he was and 
what he remembers. When he talks he tells of 
those things, often tediously in detail ; and either 
the condition of silence or of discourse is his cliief 
delight. And a smile crept into this wakeful 
old man's features again, as he heard the request. 
"Why not, my sons?'' he said ; and as he changed 
his address from "Caballeros" to "sons," he ex- 
pressed the feeling of gratification that warmed his 
old lieart. The strangers could guess by the com- 
monest rules of that lesson of life as yet so ill- 
learned by them, that the sacristan's heart clung to 
this spot and its st(n'y witii a concentrated affection. 
A memory of something greater or grander or bet- 
ter, something congenial to him through all the 
dreams and thoughts of a lonely life, kept him near 
the spot. 

"Why not, my sous, since there is ever some- 
thing more in the commonest life than appears upon 
the surface ? My race is one that loves glory and 
art and beauty, but we love also God and Holy 
Church. You are from the north, and the blood in 
your veins runs cold. Your reformers — the here- 
tics who have led so many astray, and have traduced 



262 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

and denied the Church wliich alone can save — were 
strong men here," and lie touched his forehead, 
''but they were cold here," placing liis hand upon 
his heart. "You can understand your Luther, but 
you cannot understand the gallant Kniglit of Pam- 
peluna, brilliant in armor and flushed with glory, 
who founded the Society of Jesus. The sword and 
the cross — your cold race can never understand 
that." He had arisen as he spoke, and stretched 
forth his thin right arm as though he measured an 
antagonist's rapier. 

''But the story, father," said one of the listeners; 
"you have forgotten the story." 

The sacristan sank again into his chair, and the 
sadness came again into his face. "The legend 
upon the wall reminds me of that," he said. "It 
was placed there seventy years ago. It is a long 
time — a very long time. The world has changed 
since then;" he added, "else you would not be here. 
But I will speak, and afterwards you shall judge. 

" Don Juan Salano was of a house that claimed a 
drop of the bluest blood of Spain. Its members 
stood ever near to greatness of lineage and great- 
ness in deed. But Don Juan was the princeliest of 
them all, men said, because God made him so. 
Shall I describe him to you, my sons ? Then I will 
say again that you cannot understand him : he was 
not of your kind. He had an oval face, eyes that 
shone in anger or kindness, and the form and bear- 
ing that a soldier and a noble should have. How 
beautiful his eyes were, and how tender and strong 
his voice ! He was the manliest man in Spain. 



THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 263 

JMeii admired and respected liim, and women loved 
liim, many a one. He was learned in all the learn- 
ing of Ills time — tlioiigli it was nothing then, — and 
last, he was a soldier. He could not have been 
otherwise. It is in liis race, as I told you, to love 
tlie cross and the sword. I will not tell you of how 
lie fouglit in the wars of his country. I do not love 
to talk of the old days of glory and strengtli. They 
sadden me. But I tell you that had my country 
remained as slie once was, had her sons begotten 
their like again, our country had ere this been the 
mistress of the world, and our holy church the 
church universal. Ah, she had fallen before you 
were born ; she was falling when Don Juan Sal an o 
died ; but I know what she was. God's will be 
done. 

"But Don Juan loved not only glory; he loved 
also the cliurch; and when he was as young as either 
of you, my sons, he became a priest. Do you smile 'i 
Ah, carramha ! your cold race knows nothing of 
eithei- glory or religion. I need not tell you how he 
became a priest ; only that it was duty, love, con- 
science. Do you know what I mean by the last ? 
No, you cannot even understand that. Well, it was 
that Don Juan had sinned all the sins of noble 
youth, and in time he would make atonement, and 
purge them away and forget them. 

"He asked of the council a mission, and they 
sent him here, — even here. It pleased him, for he 
knew not that Spain's daughters may be beautiful 
even in their descendants, and frail everywhere. 
They are all dead now who remember aught of the 



264 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

priest who came to tlie parish of El Paso del ^orte 
from across the sea. But I, who am old, have 
heard them tell of his noble face and his graceful 
bearing, which even a j)riest's garments might not 
conceal, and of those of his people who wished he 
were still a soldier. 

"You think he made a mistake. It is like jour 
people thus to weigh and calculate. He did not. 
Many of our religion have borne the pjx and chalice 
who could strongly wield the sword. Many times 
lias the rosary hung in the rapier's place. 

"I told you in the beginning he was a great 
artist. After he came to this spot he was doubtless 
lonely, and his life much changed from what it had 
ever been. So he beguiled the time with colors. 
In this very room he did it, and his easel sat there 
by the window, and where I sit was his seat. At 
one time he painted the Mass in the cathedral at 
Barcelona. Then he made a head of the dead 
Christ, and many others. They hung here and in 
the church, and there were many of them, for he 
labored rapidly and diligently. It was his life, his 
occupation. He did nothing but paint and pray. 
How beautiful they were, and how his soul was 
absorbed in them ! 

"The last he ever made was a Madonna; not a 
sad and tearful mother of Christ, but one whose fea- 
tures had in them a radiance, not of faith and glory, 
but of human beauty. Ah, and the face was one 
that those who sleep yonder have told me they 
knew, and all El Paso knew. It was the gem of all 



THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 265 

he did, and a curtain liid it in its place, and tliose 
only saw it who chanced to catch a glimpse. 

''By and by his soul became absorbed in art, 
and he almost forgot he was a priest. He knew lie 
was forgetting, they say ; but while he did hard 
penance, he still painted. He loved it ; he was an 
artist, my sons ; he could not help it. 

" Once upon a time there came a dignitary of our 
empire to El Paso ; one who travelled in state, 
great in power and influence. There accompanied 
him others only less than he. He came to this 
church, and scarce waiting to pray, passed on and 
entered this room. Perhaps he had heard of the 
priest and his work. He stopped and gazed. He 
called his companions also, and bade them look. 
He was astonished and surprised. ^ Where is he 
who made these ? ' he said ; ' bring him to me, for 
I have something to tell him to his own great good.' 
And they that were there said, ' It is only the padre 
Salano who did it.' ' What ? ' said he, ' the priest ? 
I care not ; he has that in him that should not rust 
here.' Then the priest came, and the Sefior saw his 
presence and face. ' Father,' said he, ' if thou wilt 
come with me thou shalt have that which shall bet- 
ter please thee, for surely thou art mistaken in thy 
calling. Wilt sell these? Name thy sum.' 

"Then Salano hung his head, and turned pale, 
and when at last he would not sell, the Senor 
departed, thinking strangely of the man, and won- 
dering that priests were oft such geniuses and such 
fools; 'but,' said he, 'thou shalt hear from me 
again ere long.' 



266 FRONTIER ARJIY SKETCHES. 

" On tliat same iiiglit the priest locked his door — 
th.at same door, mv sons, — and was for a h)ng time 
alone. What he did God knows — His will be done. 
But it is certainly told how a great smoke arose 
from the chimnev-top, and in the morning he lay 
there so prone in prayer, so wrapped in deep deyo- 
tion, that none dared disturb him. This that I tell 
you is indeed true, that pictures, canyas, colors and 
easel were never seen again. The fire consumed them 
or the flood drowned them, and the priest came forth 
sad and yery silent, and went his ways and did his 
offices with a new humility. In a day following the 
few who eyer entered here saw the panel in the 
wall. It was the last ; he touched brush or canvas 
no more. 

^'But, my sons, a man may pray full oft, 'Lead 
me not into temptation,' — he may write it in colors 
never so beautiful beneath his crucifix, and may cast 
away in bitter self-sacrifice all that may hinder him 
aught, — and there may still be left one whose beauty 
lie can neither make nor mar, and thoughts of whom 
he may not burn or put away. I have told you that 
this priest was lordly, learned, and beautiful. I 
said he w^as also a painter and a soldier. I may end 
by saying that he was also a man. He might burn 
his priceless Madonna ; but the beautiful face that 
had crept into it he could not so easily put away. It 
was there — upon the street and in the open door. 
Do you know women, my sons ? If you do you are 
older than you look, and have learned most of what 
there is to know. This priest had defeated but the 
first and least temptation. He was accustomed to 



THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 267 



admiring eyes, for there are men from whom admi- 
ration is scarce concealed. The demi-gods are few, 
bnt tliere were those wlio believed this man to be 
one. There is no tale-bearer who delivers his mes- 
sage so easily as a woman's eyes and a woman's 
rosy cheek. The Dona Anita did not admire the 
glorious priest, she did not love him, — she adored 
him. She was not a lunatic in any greater sense 
than many have been since Adam. But the mass 
had come to be a ceremonial, not for her soul, but 
for her heart ; not for God, but for the priest who 
officiated. Think you I am telling a strange thing ? 
Doubtless ; for your race are cold, as I have told 
you. Yet she did not bring her love and lay it at 
his feet. Women are born with a better knowledge 
of men than that. But there was no land to which 
she would not have followed him afar off, no fortune 
she WTHild not have shared with him. Yet without 
hope, since he was a priest. 

''But I said he was a man, and he knew all this. 
Nay, it was not that which troubled him ; it was tlie 
other fact that he carried in his heart the image of 
the Dona Anita. The Madonna's face was also her 
face, and perchance she had heard as much. He 
met her in the street, and a thrill passed through 
him if her gown but touched his garments. He saw 
her face as she knelt at the altar-rail, and — God 
pardon him! — he could have thrown away the Host 
and fled from all his vows and duties. You know 
that this priest was a heroic man, and was a priest 
for conscience sake, and for that cause had aban- 
doned that only other thing that is dearer than love 



268 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

— fame. Those wlio knew have told nie that from 
vesper-bells to matins he lay all the night upon this 
floor and praved to be delivered. He was wan and 
worn with penance and fasting, and yet, perchance, 
between his eyes and the Blessed Mother, as he 
prayed, came that other human face clothed with a 
nearer love. 

"You think, as you listen, that there can be but 
little more of a story like this. But I am old. It 
pleases me to tell all, and you will listen. It came 
about, by and by, that the priest and the Dona Anita 
understood each other, whether they would under- 
stand or no. While she disguised less and less as 
she drew nearer and nearer to him across the great 
impossibility, so grew more and more upon him the 
irksomeness of his holy ofhce. But they dared, not 
speak, scarce even look, the one to the other. There 
have been many battles fought in men's souls, harder 
and more costly than the battles of kings. This 
man was no coward, and had conquered once. But 
he was beleagured now indeed, for he loved his 
enemy, 

"It is told that one night in this room the priest 
thought he was alone. He walked back and forth, 
not quiet and calm, but anxious and almost despair- 
ing. As he passed by, his shadow fell again and 
again upon the window, and there was one near who 
saw it each time. There are times when men, and 
priests, lose faith in penance and prayer. This may 
have been to him one of those times. Presently 
she who watched the window knew that he stopped 
opposite it and stood still. Then there was the 



THE PRIEST OF EL PASO. 



269 



sound of a hurried movement, the faint clink of 
metal, and linally the outer door was opened, and 
there stood at the threshold a iigure in plumed 
helmet, the baldric upon his breast and the bright 
scabbard upon his thigh. The lamplight shone 
upon him as he looked about him, not guessing that 
any saw him. Ah, my sons, it was not altogether 
boyish. In thinking and longing, doubting and 
loving, can we wonder that it came upon him to 
once more know in secret the feel of the sword — 
the sensation of a far-gone life ? The best of us do 
much that we would not wish the world to smile at, 
and a soldier may not be blamed if he hides among 
a poor priest's effects the plume that has waved in 
the smoke of battle, and the sword he has drawn in 
the defence of his country. 

^'If we were women, we might know how she 
fell, who watched him then. It would seem that she 
forgot the reality and saw only the vision. She 
came toward him, and as she drew near to where he 
stood, he saw her. He did not llee. I have said he 
was but a man. She came very near,— nay, seated 
herself at his feet. 'Tis an old story. As she took 
his passive hand, perhaps he could look down into 
the beautiful eyes. Women are not slaves, neither 
are their lovers ; but sometimes they dispute who 
shall be the humblest. The town was asleep as it is 
to-night. The priest forgot himself in the soldier 
and the man, and stooped and kissed, not her hand 

the first woman's hand that had touched his for 

years, — but her very lips. 

''Men are men everywhere, and the priest re- 



270 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



inained a priest until the Sabbath morning. High 
mass came again. I go not so far as to tell what 
may be in men's hearts. Even if his offices at the 
altar of Holy Church were heartless, many men's 
have been so ere now. We cannot tell. Bat the 
Dona Anita came and knelt at the altar-rail. The 
priest gave her that which is the body of Christ. 
No wonder, as he saw her face, the flood that is 
without volume or sound, and which none see. over- 
whelmed him. He dropped the chalice from his 
hands, tore the robe from his shoulders, and, com- 
ing out from his place, jjassed through the startled 
people, out at the open door, and hastened away 
from his office, from the bosom of Holy Church, 
from honor, conscience and hope forever. The 
legend was written in vain, and stands in its place 
only to remind us all, my sons, that love will con- 
quer where fame, glorj^ and wealth may be beaten 
in the contest." 

The old man arose and took the lamp again from 
the bracket, and bowed toward the strangers. When, 
past the altar and images, and through the shadows, 
they again reached the open door, the weird hour of 
early dawn was upon the world. He stood in the 
doorway, and the light wind played with his thin 
locks, and the lamplight glanced across his sharply- 
outlined features, as he bade them farewell. The 
man was as remarkable as his story ; and one of his 
guests turned before he departed, for another word. 

"Father," said he, ''we are grateful to you for 
your courtesy, and express our thanks ; but will you 
not tell us who you are ? " 



THE PHI EST OF EL PASO 271 

''Others could tell you that, my son, even better 
tluiu I can. But you are strangers. My name is 
mine only by inheritance, and not by baptism. Men 
call me Garcia, for so the Church has named me ; 
but my father was a soldier and a nobleman, and I 
disclaim him not. I am the son of Senor Don J,uan 
Salano, for whose soul's repose I nightly pray, and 
my mother sleeps in the last place but one, on the 
right hand as you go out. God go with you. AcUos.^^ 
And the old sacristan turned and went back among 
the memories and shadows, to recall, ])erchance, the 
beautiful face of that Dona Anita wlio was his 
mother, long since mouldering in that ''last place 
but one as you go out," and upon the fallen priest 
who was. his father. 



XY. 
A FIGHT BETWEE]^ BUFFALOES. 

HE was a scarred and sliaggy veteran, and Lis 
general appearance indicated that he liad been 
making a good light of it for a week or more. Yet 
he seemed to be unwilling to accept the fact, begin- 
ning to be very obtrusive, that the day of his domin- 
ion was over. Like many a human imitator, he was 
uncertain npon the delicate point of his j^ersonal 
status, and lingered sulkily upon the outskirts of 
society. I dare say that in the maintenance of his 
dignity he had thus come back to the herd, and 
scowled at his descendants, and pawed, and groaned, 
and made himself generally disagreeable, innumer- 
able times. For the long hair upon his neck was 
tangled and pulled until tufts of it were loose and 
unkempt. The outer fibres of his short black horns 
hung in filaments and splinters. His wicked little 
eyes had a reddish look, and his venerable beard 
was limp and froth-wet beneath his chin. Nor were 
these the only indications of his unhappy condition. 
Sundry long, oblique hairless lines appeared upon 
his flanks, and he put his left fore foot down ten- 
derly, very likely remembering at the same time a 
square jounce he had lately got in the shoulder fi'om 
some strong-necked youngster who had taken it 
up(m himself to castigate his father. 



A FIGHT BETWEEN BUFFALOES. 273 

He stood meditating upon the outskirts of the 
herd now, and pretended to be eating grass, and it 
was as nice herbage as a bull whose teeth were 
likely none of the best could desire — the first ten- 
der growth of the early spring. But he did not 
seem tp enjoy if, and ate as one eats whose mind is 
preoccupied. At intervals of a minute or so he 
would look around over his shoulder quickly, and 
groan, and stand as if thinking, and then pretend to 
eat again. To this distressful pantomime, not one 
of ten thousand other shaggy grazers paid the least 
attention. They were busy. I could hear them 
cropping the grass as I lay there, with a continual 
rasping sound. It was only too evident that, of all 
those cows to whom he had been attentive for so 
long, who had so often been combed into curliness 
on the happy moi'nings of the long ago b}^ his tongue, 
and whom he had led and herded, and fought for, — 
of all the little, stupid, hump-backed calves, so far as 
he knew, liis own offspring, — there was not one who 
did not wish him disposed of according to buffalo 
destiny, or who cared how soon his monumental 
skull should be left standing on its base upon the 
bleak hill-top, with scarce so much as a thigh-bone 
or a faded tuft of brown hair by way of obituary. 

But this old one was still a buffalo and a bull, 
and he kept creeping nearer and nearer to the herd. 
It may have been only yesterday that he had come 
back defiant and in a rage, shaking his head, and 
breathing out threatenings and slaughter, declaring 
unmistakably that there had not been a fair fight, 
and fhat if the company desired to see a handsome 
18 



274 FRONTIER ARJIT SKETCHES. 

and scientific combat, some yomigster had better 
come out and indulge himself with a ride upon his 
venerable ancestor's horns. I cannot say positively 
that all this unseemly bragging was done by the old 
one, but if is likely that it was, and much more, and 
that under the sting of repeated defeats he had made 
himself so odious to his rivals that he was now glad 
to nurse defeat and a sore shoulder upon the out- 
skirts of the herd, but still near, and waiting for his 
present unpopularity to blow over. 

I might have killed him by this time, and ended 
his troubled career; for he was lawful game and a 
fair shot, and that was what I had come for. But I 
grew interested in his precarious fortunes, a serene 
spectator behind a bank and a convenient bunch of 
sage. He reminded me of something I had dimly 
seen in my observations of my own species, — he 
was so valorous, and yet so prudent. But pres- 
ently a calf came slowly, and in an investigatory 
way, toward him. A very immature and foolish ani- 
mal he looked, with his little black nose wet and 
wrinkled, his little brown flanks distended with ful- 
ness, and the white milk-froth depending in long 
threads from his lips. Boggle-eyed inexperience 
doubtless moved him as he came slowly near his 
father, and the two had just touched noses amicably, 
when his mother also took it into her head to come. 
Then came another cow, and another, and presently 
quite a little company of females had gathered there, 
and the battered old warrior began to look about 
him very complacently. This w^as what brought 
about a very unfortunate difficulty, and made an 



A FIGHT BETWEEN BUFFALOES. 275 



unpleasant forenoon of it for the old one. I wonder 
lie did not think of tlie result. He might Inu'e 
known that he was supposed to have had his good 
time, and had amved at an age when the young- 
bloods of the herd would not longer look compla- 
cently upon his hoary gallantries. 

A fellow almost as big as the old one must have 
seen this social gathering from some distance, and 
threw out certain intimations of his approach. Lit- 
tle plumes of dust, .very skilfully cast, rose grace- 
fully ill the air above the crowd, and there were 
certain ominous snortings and lugubrious groans. 
Tlie old one stopped chewing, with a green mouthful 
between his teeth, and listened. The cows looked 
about them complacently, with an air that seemed to 
say that, wdiile the disturbance was an unseemly one, 
it was none of theirs, and crowded off to one side. 
Yery soon the antagonists were facing each other. 
The old boy straightened out his wisp of a tail to a 
line with his back, gathered his four black hoofs 
together, arched his spine, and placing his nose close 
to the sod, stood shaking his huge front as though 
he wished finally to satisfy himself as to its freedom 
from all entanglements that might hinder him from 
tossing this ambitious j^oungster over his head, and 
breaking him in twain. 

I have often wondered at the quality of that 
unreasoning valor characteristic of tlie higher ani- 
mals, compared to which the highest human courage 
is but ordinary prudence. These two did not stop 
to think. One was old and lame, and knew he was ; 
and the oth^r would have engaged any antagonist 



276 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

whatever whom he had never seen before. Any 
two droop-horned farmer's bulls will get together 
and fight it out to the death of one or both, and 
merely for the love of it. It is not for fame, or 
glory, or even for jealousy or the gratification of 
revenge. Midnight, and any lonesome hill-side, are 
good enough. There is no parleying, no boasting. 
Have at you, Sir Hereford ! — Whack I and when 
those two curly frontlets come together, it is worth 
one's while to be there to see. 

Taurus, in all his kinds and varieties, is the lord- 
liest of beasts. Where are such gladiatorial thews 
as lie along that neck ? where such gnarled and sup- 
ple might as resides in those creased and corrugated 
thighs ? When such a one has grown tired of his 
little field and his limited acquaiutance, how easily 
he walks out and away from them, and goes ya- 
hooing and wow-wow-ing up and down the lanes of 
the neighborhood I He did not escape ; he does not 
care who sees or hears him, and throughout his 
wanderings he marches with inimitable and delib- 
erate stateliness. And yet the career that should 
spread consternation through a parish is usually 
brought to a close by one barefooted small boy, who 
drives the colossal monster back to his field and his 
harem, and can do it with only a bit of a stick to 
scare him with, and with a torn hat full of blackber- 
ries under his arm. 

The other bufi'alo came slowly, and twisting his 
tail from side to side in circles that were very delib- 
erate and grand for so small an organ. I shall 
never understand why, in the economy of nature, 



A FIG JIT BETWEEN BUFFALOES, 27T 



this inadequate appendage was ever hung behind so 
huge an animal as a buffah) bull, though upon occa- 
sions like the present he undoubtedly makes the 
most of it. He took pains to cause it to be dis- 
tinctly understood that every hair he wore was 
angry. Ilis eyes rolled in continually-increasing 
redness. His black, sharp horns were encrusted 
with earth gathered while he had been tearing the 
sod to pieces in the ecstasy of valor. His nostrils 
were distended, and he halted in his slow advance 
to toss the broken turf high over his shoulders with 
his preliminary jjawing. He was a tactician of no 
mean abilities after his kind. He made pretences 
of flank movements, and turned his shaggy shoul- 
ders, first one and then the other, toward his antag- 
onist, as asking him if he dared to come and smite 
him in the ribs. But the other was equally learned 
in the arts of the field, and stood shaking his huge 
head, as who should say, "Come hither and be 
annihilated." 

But this by-play of battle could not last long. 
They by no means intended to take it out in vapor- 
ing. I, who saw it, found the desire to see it all 
momentarily grow upon me. It was not by any 
means that I had always, upon the occasion of a 
fight, felt an uncontrollable desire to stay. But this 
fight was not mine, and I was not even in sight. 
But, recalling sunny afternoons in crowded amphi- 
theatres, where many a picador was overthrown, 
and many a curved horn was thrust remorselessly 
into the bowels of blindfolded horses, and five tawny 
bulls died like Caesar to please a roaring crowd, I 



2Y8 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

was never more interested than now. I wondered 
why I was thns ah)ne — w^hy there was no one to 
watch with me this Titanic battle. And there was. 
Peering over the edge, like myself, sat a little gray 
thief of a coyote, and beyond him another and 
another. I could hear him faintly whine, and could 
see him wipe his attenuated chops with his red 
tongue, and leer and long. 

The challenger advanced to within a few feet of 
his antagonist, getting angrier and angrier as he 
came. Suddenly there was a dull crash, which had 
in it something Homeric. A rattling onset of that 
kind leaves one in no doubt as to why the horns of 
buffaloes have a dilapidated and splintered appear- 
ance at the apices. Then there was a long and 
steady push, in wdiicli every tendon of the huge 
bodies seemed- strained to the utmost tension. After 
repeated vigorous thrusting, accompanied by tre- 
mendous snortings, there was a strategic easing off, 
and then a sudden collision which pressed the two 
heads to the earth in an even balance of strength. 
IN^either beast dared relax a muscle or retreat an 
inch, for fear of that fatal charge upon the flank, or 
that perilous twist of the neck which means defeat. 

And now the cows returned, and looked compla- 
cently on, and the very calves began to shake their 
stupid-looking heads in the first vague instinct of 
combativeness inspired by the battle of the bulls. 
The youi^g lordlings of the herd distended their 
nostrils, elevated their tails, and yet forbore any 
active interference. It was a duel a V outrance. A 
moment's relaxation of the tremendous strain only 



A FIGHT BETWEEN BUFFALOES. 2T9 

resulted in tlie shaggy lieacls coining togetlier again 
with a dull thump, and a renewal of the stubborn 
pushing tJiat might have moved a freight-train. It 
became a matter of lungs and endurance ; and the 
froth began to dro]) in long, tenacious strings from 
their lips, and their eyes to glare dimly through 
what seemed clots of blood. . I could hear their 
labored breathing even where I lay, and see the 
strained tendons stand out across the thighs and 
along the. thick necks. 

But this dead-set of strength could not last. 
Every moment of time was telling upon the failing 
strength and shorter wind of the valorous old cru- 
sader, who still fought for the loves of his youth. 
His lame foot slipped, and a knowledge of this 
slight disaster seemed to reach his antagonist more 
quickly than a flash of light. ]^o skilful fighter 
ever urged his advantage more suddenly. There 
was a huge lunge, a sound as of horns slipping upon 
each other, a spring forward, and the horn of the 
younger bull had made a raking upward stroke 
through the flank of his antagonist. The fight now 
became more one-sided, and more bloody. Again 
and again the old one tried to make his old ward of 
head to head, and as often his more active antago- 
nist caught him behind the shoulder. With the red 
agony of defeat in his eye, and the blood flowing 
from the long wounds in his flanks, he still refused 
to be conquered. With failing strength, and limbs 
which refused an}' longer to serve him, he finally 
stood at bay, with open mouth and hanging tongue, 
pitifully panting, unable to fight and disdaining to 



^80 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

retreat. He was pushed, and yielded sullenly. He 
made no attempt to shield his flank, and patiently 
endured all that came. The original plan of non- 
interference was now abandoned, and the young 
lords of the herd began to gather round him, and 
snort, and shake their heads, and give him an occa- 
sional maledictory dig in the ribs, by way of express- 
ing their contempt for him. The cows came and 
sniffed at him, and indulged themselves in spiteful 
feminine butts, and walked away. Their manner 
seemed meant to imply that they had always regard- 
ed him as a disagreeable old muff, and that they 
were glad of an opportunity to express their heart- 
felt sentiments in regard to him. 

Through all this the old bull stood sullen, — 
whipped, but still obstinate. Gradually the herd 
left him to himself, and the vast crowd of spectators 
and intermeddlers wandered slowly awa}^ It was 
no more to them than some other man's misfortune 
is to the reader or to myself. He did not even look 
around. He was forced at last to accept his sen- 
tence of banishment, and go and live as long as he 
could alone, or in the odious company of other bulls 
like unto himself, and fight his last fight with the 
coyotes, and die. 

But that calf came out to see him again. I say 
that calf, because it seemed to me to be the same 
who had brought on this last unpleasantness, — 
though, for that matter, they are all alike. Tlie calf 
came, and arched his back, and elevated his nine- 
inch tail, and pawed, and gave his venerable parent 
to understand, in the plainest terms, that he held 



.4 FIGHT BETWEEN BUFF ALOE Si 281 

himself in readiness to give him a terrible drubbing, 
if he had not already been sufficiently gratified. It 
was exasperating to see the young milk-sop imitate 
the actions of his seniors, while the poor old bull 
did not so much as look at him. But his calfship 
was inclined to push matters, and finally made a 
pass which placed his foolish head with a considera- 
ble thump against the old one's nose. He stood a 
moment with the air of having hurt himself a little, 
and ambled ofi" to his motlier. 

The old one did not move, and seemed hardly to 
notice this babyish persecution. But I suspect it 
broke his heart. He wandered slowly down toward 
the sedge, limping and sorrowful ; and I lay there, 
forgetful of the long army gun beside me, only 
regretting that there had been no one to bet with 
upon the result of the battle, or to stand boldly up 
and confirm this story afterwards. The sun rose 
high in the heavens, the wind veered, there was a 
sudden panic, and the vast multitude disappeared 
beyond the hills, leaving me to plod back to camp 
guiltless of blood, — the three coyotes looking after 
with familiar indiiference, — and to muse meanwhile 
upon the problem of universal injustice and disaster, 
only to be accounted for by recounting to ourselves 
that ancient and somewhat diaphanous narrative of 
Eden, an apple, a woman, and the devil. 



XYI. 
CHICQUITA. 

IF you stand upon a certain bluft', on the soutli 
side of the Arkansas river, a few miles above 
the mouth of the Purgatoire, in the earliest dawn 
of morning, you will be a witness of a scene not 
easily forgotten in future wanderings. Eastward 
stretches dimly away the winding, sedgy valley of 
the dreariest river of the west, treeless, sajidy, 
desolate. All around you are tlie endless undula- 
tions of the wilderness. Beneath you are the yet 
silent camps of those who are here to-day and gone 
to-morrow. Westward is something you anticipate 
rather than see; vague and misty forms lying bhie 
upon the horizon. But while the world is yet dark 
below and around you, and there is scarcely tlie 
faintest tinge of gray in the east, if you chance to 
look northward you will see something crimson high 
up against the sky. At first it is a roseate glow, 
shapeless and undefined. Then it becomes a cloud- 
castle, battlemented and inaccessible, draped in 
mist, and hung about with a waving curtain of 
changing purple. But as it grows whiter and clearer, 
the vague outlines of a mighty shape appear below 
it, stretching downward toward the dim plain. 
What you see is the lofty pinnacle that has gleamed 
first in the flying darkness, sun-kissed and glorified 

■282 



CinCQUITA. 283 



in the rosy mornings of all the cycles, the last to 
catch the fading light of all the days. It is Pike's 
Peak, ninety miles away. 

Perchance before you turn to leave the spot, you 
may absently glance at your immediate surround- 
ings. If you do, you will have before yow at once 
the two great types of changelessness and frailty; for 
at your feet, scarce noticed in its loneh^ humility, is 
a single low mound, turliess and yellow, unmarked 
by even' so much as a cross or an inscription, but 
nevertheless telling that old story which never needs 
an interpreter, that here rests another of the wander- 
ers, and that there is no land so lonely that it has 
not its graves. 

There may be a story more or less interesting 
connected with every one of the nnmarked graves of 
the border. The rough lives that end here have all 
a history. But no one remembers it. Here, as in 
busy streets, the lives which, once ended, are deemed 
worthy of remembrance, are few and very far be- 
tween. But this lone and wind-kissed mound upon 
the hill-top, albeit unmarked and seldom seen, has 
about it some slight interest not common to the rest; 
for it is the grave of a woman, and one of the strong- 
est and most faithful of her sex. This is her story. 

Years ago, a victim of the nomadic instinct named 
Lemuel Sims — a man who had first forsaken his home 
in the Missouri bottoms for a gold-hunting expedi- 
tion to California, and after many changes, had again 
started eastward, — found himself stranded upon the 
inhospitable banks of the Arkansas, within the magic 
circle of protection around old Fort Lyon. Sims 



284: FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCBES, 

had grown middle-aged in wandering, and had con- 
sumed almost the last remains of that dogged per- 
sistence and energy in migration which is the char- 
acteristic of his class, by the time he had reached a 
spot than which it would have been hard to find one 
more entirely wanting in attractiveness. But he 
was not alone, for he had a wife who had been his 
companion in all his journeyings, and three daugh- 
ters, who had irregularly come in upon his vicis- 
situdes. In sending those guests who are often 
unwelcome, but are never turned away, it has been 
remarked that our fates are not always kind; and it 
is certain that tlie elder Sim's Penates had been 
especially inconsiderate. What he had needed was 
boys; boys to wJiom shoukl come kindly the lot of 
the rancher, of the Indian figliter, the hunter, and 
the poker-player, — who should diligently follow in 
the footsteps of their wild predecessors, and live 
hard and die suddenly. 

When Sims came to this, his last residence, the 
order of march was as follows: First, Sims, a hun- 
dred yards in advance, and across his shoulder the 
long rifle that now has a place in museums, but 
which has made a larger subordinate figure in Amer- 
ican history than all the Winchesters and Sharps. 
Secondly, two mules and an old wagon, Mrs. Sims 
at the helm. Thirdly, three cows, some calves, and 
five dogs ; and behind all, two freckled, brawny, 
barefoot girls. The third and youngest, the darling 
of the family, — too young, indeed, for service, — 
ocenpied a cosy nest among the household goods, 
and peeped out from beneath the dilapidated wagon- 



CHICQUITA. 285 



cover, plump, saucy, and childishly content. She 
had acquired the name of "Chuck," abbreviated 
from Chicquita, "little one;" and amid all the 
changes that befell her thereafter the name clung to 
her, regardless of its inappropriateness to such a 
woman. 

The Sims "outfit" was only one of a cavalcade 
of such, strong enough for all purposes of society 
and defence. Months had passed since the family 
began this last move. The long summer days were 
gone, and the nipping nights and scanty pasturage 
were the cause of the premature ending of the jour- 
ney. Having stopped only for a night, they had 
concluded to stay until spring, or some other time 
when a return of the migratory disease should seize 
them. But the rough house of cottonwood logs 
which Sims made, with the help of his family, was 
a sheltered nook which soon became home-like. 
There was game in abundance, and what was not 
immediately consumed the old man exchanged for 
groceries at the post. AVhat was still more fortu- 
nate, Sims's house was near the route of travel, and 
he found he could indulge his love of gossip as 
well as furnish an occasional meal to travelers. 
When spring came, the stock had multiplied and 
grown fat. Impelled by the force of circumstances, 
unwonted industrj^ was the order at Sims's. A small 
garden was inclosed, and it came about that by June 
the frontiersman and his family found themselves 
prospering beyond anything in their past history. 
The shanty took upon itself the dignity of a house — 
or, as it was more fittingly called in that country, a 



286 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



rancli. "Sinis's" became known far and wide, and 
the proprietor began to think himself gaining upon 
the world both in money and respectability — two 
things wliich, in the present unfortunate condition of 
society, are not equally distributed. But this new 
era of prosperity was not due to Sims's management. 
It grew mainly out of the fact that he had three 
daughters. The unfortunate constitution of the fam- 
ily was the cause of its unwonted thrift. Any pas- 
sably well-appearing white woman in such a place is 
an enticement not to be resisted by the average 
plainsman, and "Sims's gals" were celebrities over 
an extent of country half as large as the State of 
Xew York. 

But as time passed, and the small herds increased, 
the females became objects of a still profounder inter- 
est. They were spoken of as heiresses. IN^everthe- 
less, at the pinch, no amount of money could have 
married either of the two eldest daughters. They 
were tall, gaunt, and angular. They were as igno- 
rant as Eve, and had so long performed the duties 
which generally pertain to masculinity that either 
was a fair match for a cinnamon bear. Kot so with 
the youngest. The most courtly and polished dames 
in the land seldom display so much in the way of 
personal beauty as this one rose among the thistles. 
Fair-skinned and blue-eyed, strong and graceful, pet- 
ted from infancy and nurtured in comparative ease, 
healthful in sentiment as in body, she was the espe- 
cial attraction, and came seldom in contact with tlie 
rough characters who frequented her father's house, 
and who were generally treated by her with the high 



CmCQUITA. 287 



disdain of a superior creature. And. she had the 
mind of the familj'. Her opinions were the hiw of 
the house, and she occupied her autocratic position 
without embarrassment, and ruled without check. 
Old Sims was her confidential nnm-servant, and her 
mother was only her privileg'ed associate and adviser. 
As for her big sisters, they continually rebelled, and 
always obeyed, tliougli her caustic strictures upon 
their hoydenish behavior toward the male visitors at 
the ranch were unlieeded. There is a mysterious 
law of primogeniture by which children embody the 
characteristics of distant ancestors, and completely 
ignoring the nearer family traits and circumstances, 
reproduce the vices and virtues that are long forgot- 
ten and the lineaments that have been dust for a 
century. There must have been some rare blood in 
the Sims ancestry, for this last scion of a race which 
had been subjected to all the influences of the fron- 
tier — hardship and toil in the Alleghanies, ague and 
laziness in the Missouri bottoms, and poverty always, 
— was totally unlike her family and her surroundings. 
The great feet, gaunt limbs, big brown hands, coarse 
complexions, and carroty hair, of her sisters and 
mother, were things they had apart from Chicquita. 
JN'obody knew how she had really learned to read, 
or by w^hat mysterious process she had become pos- 
sessed of certain well-thumbed books and estray 
newspapers. ]^o one ever inquired how her gar- 
ments came to lit her round figure with a neatness 
that was a miracle to the uninitiated, or why the coils 
lay so neatly upon her shapely head. Finally the 
pervading force that directed all things in and around 



288 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 



the ranch came to be almost unquestioned. A beauty 
with a will has always been a power in her immedi- 
ate world ; — a beauty with brains and a will is some- 
times the most complete and powerful of despots. 

The Sims family had now been five years in 
this locality — an unprecedented stay in one spot. 
Mainly through the ability of the youngest cliild, 
now a mature w^oman, aided by the circumstance of 
a fortunate location, they had acquired cattle, money 
and respectability. The money and the respecta- 
bility were easily cared for, because Chicquita carried 
them both upon her person. But the herd which 
was gathered nightly into the corral was the lure of 
final destruction. The charmed circle which was 
drawn around the post was an uncertain and indefi- 
nite one, that might be near or far, according to 
the occasion ; and the incursions of Apaches are 
governed by no conventionality. After long delay, 
and frequent smaller thefts, came the final raid that 
took all. 

Old Sims and Chicquita started to go to the post. 
The presence of the latter was necessary to keep the 
former from getting drunk and falling into the hands 
of military minions, to be incarcerated in the post 
guard-house, — as, to say truth, had occurred to that 
convivial person before. In the perfect peacefulness 
and serenity of the early morning, it seemed impos- 
sible that death and ruin could lurk so near. As 
the old man dug his heels into the flanks of his 
mule, and Chicquita looked complacently back from 
her seat upon a pony only less wilful than his rider, 



CHICQUITA. 289 



the two little dreamed that it was the last time tliej 
were ever to see Sims's ranch. 

As they threaded their way along the intricacies 
of the trail, Chicquita of course in the lead, the old 
man labored diligently to bring out the capacities of 
his mule, wherever the path was sufficiently wide to 
permit his riding beside his daughter. In truth, he 
had something to say to her concerning those mat- 
ters in which girls are always interested and about 
which they are always unwilling to talk. A confi- 
dential conversation with his daughter was one of 
Sims's ungratified ambitions- a thing which in late 
years he had often atte-mpted, and as often failed in 
accomplishing. She cared for him, was kind and 
loving enough, but seemed to have no ideas in com- 
mon with him; and do what he would this morning, 
he could not keej3 pace with her. When two 2)er- 
sons are thus together, there is often an unconscious 
idea of the thoughts of one in the mind of the other; 
and the girl, for this or for some other reason, kept 
c<mstantly and persistently in the lead. But tlie 
subject was one that bore heavily upon the old 
man's mind, and, despairing of nearer approach, he 
presently called out from behind : 

"Chuck!" 

" Well, what is it ? " came from the depths of the 
sun-bonnet in front. 

"I want to know now, honest, which of them 
fellers which air one or 'tother on 'em alius around 
our house, you're goin' finally to take. It looks as 
though Sarey, bein' the oldest, shud hev some kind 
of a chance, — an' she did afore you growed up; but 
19 



290 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

now it 'pears as though she'd hev to wait. ^N^ow, as 
atween them fellers, I'd like to know, an' '' — plain- 
tively — '''pears to me like I've a right to know, 
which 11 V 'em you're goin' to take. I couldn't be 
lono- a choosin' ef 'twas me. Wv, Tom Harris is 
big an' hansum, an' rides forty mile every week to 
git a sight on ye. I can tell from that feller's looks 
thet he'd swim the Arkansaw an' light anything 
fur ye." 

The face in the sun-bonnet grew red as a peony 
at the mention of the name; but the old man did 
not see that, and continued : 

''But I'm mainly oneasy on account of there 
bein' two on 'em. When Tom an' the slick-lookin' 
feller from Maxwell's is there at the same time, they 
passes looks wich means everything that two sich 
fellers can do fur to win. I don't like 'tother feller, 
an' neither do the old woman. He'd do amost any- 
thing, in my opinion ; an' ef you don't make choice 
atween 'em soon, them fellers '11 fight, an' that's 
sartiii. ' ' 

The face which had been rosy grew slightly pale 
as he talked. The old man had told his daughter 
nothino' she did not alreadv know, but she was star- 
tied to think that the hostility of the two men had 
been noticed by others. Tlie question with her was 
not wliich one she would "take.'' as her father liad 
expressed it, but how to rid lierself of the disap- 
pointed one. Tlierefore, woman-like, she had en- 
couraged neither of them. To her acute mind the 
affair had been a trouble for weeks, and the words of 
her father gave her new cause for disquiet. 



CHICQUITA. 291 



Old Sims, having thus broken the ice, would 
have continued; but his daughter stopped him with 
an exclamation, and pointed to the sand at their 
feet. Sims approached and peered cautiously at the 
spot indicated by his companion. There they were, 
not an hour old, the ugly, inturned moccasin tracks 
of four, eight, a dozen Indians. In a woman, tim- 
idity and wit are often companions to each other, 
and Chicquita reined in her horse with a determined 
air. "I don't like that," said she; "I'm going 
back. It can do no harm if the herd is driven hon)e, 
and I am going to see it done ; " and she turned her 
horse. 

"Wy, now," said Sims, "wat's the use ^ Sich 
things aint oncommon; come on.'' 

"You can go on alone, if you tliink best," she 
answered. 

Before he could reply, she was gone; and, irri- 
tated by what he considered a useless panic, he dog- 
gedly continued his journey toward the po'st. The 
sight of an Indian trail eight miles from home 
seemed a poor cause for fright, even in a woman, 
Sims thought, as he kept on his way. He fancied it 
was not that which had caused her to retreat ; it was 
to avoid any further conversation upon the topic he 
had broached. " Cur'us critters is women," he pro- 
foundly remarked to himself, as he jogged on. 

Sims spent that night, unconscious of all its hor- 
rors, happy-drunk in the post guard-house. 

An apprehension that she could hardly under- 
stand filled the mind of the girl as she urged her 
pony toward home. Pier father's words added to 



292 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

her excitement, and she thought of wliat Tom Har- 
ris, strong, daring, and handsome, woiihl be at such 
a time. His tall figure, cheery face and handsome 
dress, as he sometimes sat upon his horse at her 
father's door, blithe and fresh after his ride of forty 
miles for her sake, came vividly before her. Even 
in the midst of her anxiety and nervousness, she felt 
that she and Tom, united in purpose and effort, 
could do anything in this world. Such were the 
strong woman's thoughts of the man she loved 
because he was even stronger than she. 

Two miles from home, the rider's heart sank 
within her at the sight of a column of smoke on the 
verge of the familiar horizon. Frightened indeed 
now, she urged her pony to his utmost, and at the 
crest of the hill that overlooked her home, or the 
nook in which it had once stood, the truth burst 
upon her that while her father had talked to her of 
her lovers, and while she was yet speculating upon 
the footprints in the sand, the torch had been applied, 
and now herds, house, mother, and sisters were all 
gone. 

It is not a romance, or a tale of hair breadth 
'scapes, or a narration of the adventures of a second- 
class hero in a dime novel. It occurred then as it 
does now, every year upon the frontier. If was the 
burning of a home, and the murder and captivity of 
its occupants. One who desires to tell a marvellous 
story for the delight of the groundlings must find a 
more uncommon incident than this. It was to Chic- 
quita a moment of conflicting grief and terror, with 
an overwhelming sense of utter loneliness and help- 



CHICQUITA. 293 



lossness. The beautiful and subtle sense of woman 
may guide, but it can neither guard nor revenge. 
There seemed no help, and the girl wished in her 
heart she had gone with the rest. But she was not 
so entirely alone, for as slie came nearer she saw the 
tall figure of Tom Harris, newly alighted from an 
all-night ride, standing beside his jjanting horse, so 
entirely occupied with a despairing contemplation of 
the smouldering ruins that he had not as yet noticed 
her approacli. But when lie quickly turned and rec- 
ognized hei-, his grim face took color like a flash. 
In truth, Tom's paleness was not the paleness of 
fear. Words were inadequate to express the bitter- 
ness with which he had cursed the Apaches, as he 
stood looking at the burning house, and thinking 
with a pang that she was among the victims. But 
when he turned and saw her, all was thenceforth fair 
and serene to Tom Harris. With a frontiersman's 
quick perception of circumstances and situations of 
this kind, he understood, and asked no questions. 

"The 'Baches are clear gone with everything. 
Miss," he said. "They must a' dcme it in ten min- 
its. Come, light down now, wont ye ? The pony's 
about done for, an' — W'y now Miss, 't aint no use 
a grievin'. Ye can't bring 'em back, an' ye can't 
catch the Injuns, — not today. I'll be even with 
'em if I live, but I've known a many such things in 
my time, an' — " 

Tom stopped, for he had a sense of how tame and 
meaningless his rude efforts at comfort were to the 
silent and horror-stricken woman before him, whose 
whole mind seemed engrossed in a struggle with the 



294 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

calamitj that had befallen her. The well-meaning 
fellow went away and waited some distance apart. 
And while he stood there the white despairing face 
grew still whiter, and she slipped helplessly from 
the pony, and lay a lifeless heap upon the ground. 
This was the time of the frontiersman's despair. In 
all his life's vicissitudes, there had been none like 
this. He knew nothing of what he ought to do in 
the case of a fainting fit, and was afraid to try. But 
he stripped the thick bhinkets from his horse and 
the pony, and hurriedly spread them in the shade 
by the bank side. Then he made a pillow of his 
saddle — a thing he had often done for liimself; and 
with a redness that rose to his temples, and a thrill 
that went to his fingers' ends, he lifted the girl, and, 
strong as he was, fairly staggering under the bur- 
den, laid her upon the couch he had made. He took 
his own soft serape, with its crimson stripes, and 
spread it for a covering, and filled his canteen and 
placed it near her, possibly with a question if she 
would ever drink from such a thing as that. Then 
he sat down afar off, and listlessly picked holes in 
the ground with his long knife, and whistled softly, 
and sighed within himself. Tom loved the woman 
who lay there, and because he loved her he was 
afraid she would die, and besides, was afraid of her, 
herself. Most men experience the same feeling once 
in their lives. 

But there had been another and an unseen spec- 
tator of all this. We cannot tell by what peculiar 
conjunction of the planets things in this world fall 
out as they do, but while Tom was executing his 



CHICQIUTA. 29i 



plans of comfort for the girl, "the slick-lookin' fel- 
ler from Maxwell's'^ was watching afar off. He 
came no nearer, because he did not at first under- 
stand the situation. The burning building suggested 
Indians, and he wished no nearer acquaintance with 
them, should they still be there. But while he 
looked, he saw and recognized those two, and a 
pang of jealousy entered his heart. Then he stayed 
at a distance because he desired to keep for future 
misrepresentation the circumstances of which he 
had been an unseen witness ; and finally he rode 
away, baffled and puzzled, and pondering in his 
Jieart some scheme that could harm his formidable 
rival. 

The afternoon passed slowly away, and still the 
anxious and unhappy Tom Harris kept watch. Oc- 
casion allj^ he crept on tiptoe and looked at his 
charge. She seemed asleep. Finally he hobbled the 
two horses to prevent escape, gathered some of the 
vegetables that were left in the ruined garden, and 
stified a strong man's hunger with young radishes, 
green tomatoes and oilless lettuce. He could afford 
to wait, for he w^as engaged in wdiat he wondered to 
think was, in spite of all his anxiety and perplexity, 
the most delightful vigil of his life. He did not 
know that hours ago the occupant of the couch had 
opened her eyes, had touched the crimson-barred 
serape, had seen the stalwart sentinel afar off, and 
had lain quiet, exhausted with anxiety, and perhaps 
oppressed by the somnolence of grief. 

Through the long watches of the night the sleep- 
less frontiersman paced back and forth, listening to 



296 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

the chatter of the coyote and tlie gray wolfs long 
drawn howl. He scared away the prowlers of the 
night, and listened and waited. Anon he crept close 
to the couch of the sleeper, and listened to her 
breathing, doubtful if she were not dead, then crept 
away again witli the happy consciousness that Love 
and he had all the wilderness to themselves. 

In the early morning he heard the clank of sabres 
and the hum of voices, and a troop of cavalry 
appeared from the post, — among them old Sims, 
red-eyed and trembling, but sobered by apprehen- 
sion and grief. The man from Maxwell's had con- 
veyed the news, — acting doubtless more from a 
sense of the delightfulness of the task of carrying 
ill tidings than from any sense of duty or desire to 
be of service. They left men and means for convey- 
ing the girl back to the post, and old Sims returned 
with her. It is but a mere unimportant episode, 
that she cast the glamour of her womanliness over 
the commandant's wife, and sat at her table an 
invited guest. That was the first lady Chicquita 
had ever seen : and to her, as the days passed, the 
story of the tall lover and his night watch, and all 
the girl's hopes and thoughts about him, became as 
an open page. And as for Tom Harris, the soldiers 
had given him something to eat, and he mounted his 
horse and accompanied them on the trail. His step 
was as light and his heart as merry as though he 
had slept in his bed ; for as he looked back the last 
time the face he saw was sad and white, but the eyes 
were those of a woman who looks after one she loves 
and hopes to see again. 



CHICQUITA. 29: 



Frail of boclj now, but strong of purpose, the 
unconquerable spirit of Sims' s daughter emploj^ed 
itself in directing the building of another house upon 
the spot that had been so long her home. In a 
month she and Sims were again established, in the 
little prairie nook, in a cabin not unlike the last, but 
surrounded by a palisade which bade defiance to 
Indian assault. The two were by no means poor ; 
and while the old man drowned the j)ast in half- 
drunken inanity, the dependants of the house 
did the work the two daughters had once done. 
Chicquita, stately and sad, but softened, seemed 
always to wait and watch for some one who ne\'er 
came, and of whom she never spoke. The troops 
with whom Tom Harris went away had long since 
returned. They reported a day's running fight, 
which was duly mentioned in general orders, but in 
which they had suiFered no losses. If Tom had 
returned to his place, why did he not come again to 
Sims's ranch? So she used constantly to ask herself. 
And then there was his beautiful serape ; he might 
even come for that. But he did not. The man 
from Maxwell's came, and so placid was his recep- 
tion that he straightway went away again. Yet he 
came again. The pale-faced woman had drooped a 
little, he thought, and had come to be a blue-veined 
and frail-looking creature, who seemed to care even 
less for his distinguished company than ever before. 
But even while she cooled his ardor with a grand 
dignity, she seemed listening for some footfall, wait- 
ing for some one who never came. 

Poor girl; would she never know? Was it to be 



298 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

like a wilderness poem of somebody waiting, waiting, 
while the years passed and until death came i There 
was one woman in all the world to wdiom she might 
go, and who knew or could discover wdiere he was 
for whom she had watched so long, and who never 
came. Old Sims one day carried this tall frail 
daughter of his to the post. She was willing to talk 
with him now, only she said, whenever he came too 
near the forbidden subject, "You cannot under- 
stand, papa," and the old man would again reLapse 
into a sad silence. He could not understand his 
daughter either. She was of an alien kind to him 
forever. 

The commandant's wife kissed Chicquita, and 
looked unutterable things. It was come at last, — 
the task she dreaded, the tale she hoped to lighten 
as best she might. But the sad face touched her 
heart, and she w^ept, and weeping told it all. I do not 
know^ what passed between the worldly lady and her 
lyrotsfjee^ as the two sat together holding each other's 
hands, the one pale and cold, the other crying for 
sympathy and i)ity, her dainty shoulder offering a 
resting-place for a head whose bright coils shone in 
contrast to the wanness of her cheek. "My hus- 
band has always known," she said, "but he hoped 
you might — forget. We kept it from you, hoping 
that time would cure all. He was the only man to 
fiill. He was foremost, and the soldiers thought he 
only went for amusement, and because he hated 
Indians. They buried him where he fell — they 
could not do otherwise ; and I am sorry we did not 
tell you long ago. But we did not understand — 



CHICQUITA. 299 



did not understand that jon were so good and brave 
as you are. You do not know how much I wish he 
had never gone. He woukl have come back if he 
had lived, and he was very brave. We will all do 
anything for you that we can. If you will only stay 
with me for a while, and be petted and nursed, I 
should so like to have you. It is the saddest thing 
I have ever know^n, and you, — you are not like the 
rest." 

Tom was dead. She must have known it before, 
she changed so slightly at the tidings. Perhaps she 
had only hoped against hope, having long ago known 
that the man whose stature she had measured as she 
lay through that summer night upon the couch he 
had made for her would have returned had he been 
alive. The sleeplessness of courage and honor was 
not for naught. It was the one memory of which 
she was proud, the one keepsake of him who would 
never come back. The love of a life in which it was 
the only glimpse of something brighter and happier 
was as much a reality as though it had been plighted 
a thousand times. Perhaps the ancestral courage 
and hope which had come to her through such 
degenerate veins helped her to die. 

She crept to the bedside, whose topmost cover 
was a crimson-barred serape ; but she never left it 
again. The bright strong face that had looked back 
at her in the saddle-leap a few weeks ago, w^as still 
hers. What wonder that, since he could not come 
to her, — to the house that, with a strong woman's 
fancy she had made for him to protect her in, — she 
should go to him ? The sublimities of life are ever 



800 FRONTIER AR3IY SKETCHES. 

incomplete ; the best hopes are hopes only. Her 
life must have a memory compared to which the 
realities of most are but tame. 

It is but a camp-fire story, and time was when 
every soldier at the now abandoned post, whose bro- 
ken walls impress the traveller with a new aspect of 
desolation as he passes by, knew the place of "Chic- 
quita's Grave." But the years have passed, and 
now only the legend remains : — the legend and the 
lonesome mound, that serve at least to recall the 
almost forgotten truth that there is no land so far 
and silent that it has not its loves and its graves. 



XVII. 
AEMY HULES. 



a "^ HERE is an important personage in military 
- circles who seems not yet to liave found a biog- 
rapher. He has been used as a comparative, lias 
been maligned by having a numerous class likened 
to him, and honored in the use of a thousand prov- 
erbs, maxims, and descriptive epithets. Yet he 
occupies the unusual position of one who cannot be 
dispensed with. The army mule has long since 
become a by-word, and his reputed "cheek" an 
American synonym. His service with the military 
is professional, and between him and his drivers 
there exists a certain well-understood sympathy and 
kinship. Mule-driving is a passion with a certain 
class, and the horse takes a place of comparative 
insignificance, as a creature fit only for the drawing 
of caissons and the carrying of cavalrymen. The 
commissary and quartermaster's departments, with- 
out which it would be impossible to live, are in 
charge of the mule. The government of the Repub- 
lic is the largest mule owner in the world. The two 
matters of greatest importance in military affairs 
are, first, the health and efficiency of the men ; and 
second, the condition of the mules. 

ISTevertheless, he is an outrage upon nature, a 
monstrosity, a combination of the donkey and the 



302 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

horse, with the qualities of neither and excelling 
both. He is the puzzle of the brutes, and stands 
alone in his nature and qualities, unapproachable in 
devilment, fathomless in cunning, born old in crime, 
of disreputable paternity and incapable of posterity, 
stolid, imperturbable, with no love for anything but 
the perpetration of tricks, no dexterity in aught save 
the flinging of his heels, no desire for anything but 
rations — stolen if possible and by preference — and 
no affection at all. Such is the mule. 

Yet he is an animal who deserves a very differ- 
ent biography from any that so far any one has 
found it in his heart to write of him. There are 
men whom all mules hate, probably because of the 
existence of some rivalry between the two; who are 
ever the victims of one of those lightning blows 
which are wonders of dexterity and force*, considered 
as coming from so clumsy a limb. These are they 
who have given our long-eared friend his reputation. 
The mule is an animal of character, — bad it may be, 
but still a defined though not a very well understood 
character. Many men have not that much to recom- 
mend them. 

Everybody knows this anomaly in animalism, as 
they fancy very well indeed, unless it should be 
some far down-eastern young person, who may im- 
agine him to be only a variety of the genus asinus. 
There was a returned soldier once who was accus- 
tomed to get himself pitied by enumerating among 
his hardships the item that he had been more than 
(mce obliged to subsist upon mule's milk. But, at 
least, we all know him by sight in the street. We 



ABMY MULES. 303 



liave marked the queer, knowing, leery, sidelong 
glance of his eje at us as we passed bv. We have 
seen the furtive agilitj with which the wisp of haj 
is stolen from the passing wagon, and the entire 
stolidity with which he stands asleep in the sun. 
The yearling mule is undoubtedly the incarnation 
and sum-total of quadrupedal deviltry. He is the 
originator of a distinct and uninterrupted series of 
grotesque diabolisms. With his scant and ungrace- 
ful tail tangled with whole acres of heterogeneous 
burs, and the long and faded hair upon his belly 
waving in the breeze, his fuzzy mane, scarce grown 
to any likeness of hair, sits upon him with the same 
air as do the whiskers of a shaveling country youth, 
lie has in his movements a peculiar jog-trot, which 
i)i itself suggests careless and irredeemable depravity. 
It is the gait of one who steadily goes to the bad, 
but never quite gets there. At that age, the eyes 
are foxy and shrewd, and lack the look of deep sad- 
ness so often seen in those of his aged relative of the 
dray and jobbing-wagon. The little black hoofs are 
hard and polished, and, like those of the goat and 
cliamois, especially fitted for clinging in slippery 
places. And those ears; — in all his kind they 
have ever refused to be hidden. Even as he stands 
thinking, against the sunny side of the barn, they 
are ever moving, — now backward, now forward, and 
in opposite ways. You can tell by these tokens 
almost the moment when an unusually malevolent 
idea is born within him. When the}^ are laid fairlv 
nlong his neck, his countenance is a demonstration 
of the truth of physiognomy. Mischief has then 



304 FRONTIER AR3fY SKETCHES. 

its incarnation. The clumsy limbs astonish you 
with sudden liniberness, and fly high in the air with 
a rapidity that defies vision. Old, stiff, worn-out, 
the faculty of acrobatic kicking never leaves him, 
whatever else may befall his numb faculties. 

Men whose labors in this life have taken the 
strange direction of mule-raising, are supposed to 
lead short lives and troublous ones. From infancy 
to age, there is no fence that will hold, no system 
that will train the creature into staid and respecta- 
ble barn-yard habits. Place twenty of these young- 
sters at a long trough, feed them liberally with oats, 
and it will be more from luck than prudence if he 
whose duty it is to give them provender succeeds in 
getting out from among the shaggy conclave with 
less than twenty out of the forty lioofs having been 
flung in his face. Ere you can turn to look, the 
creature has meekly reversed his ears, and is indus- 
triously champing his provender, seeming mildly to 
wonder how you could ever have suspected ?dm.. 

The very existence of the mule argues against the 
sagacity of his ancestor, the horse. Is there any 
more pitiful spectacle than a stalwart mare, whose 
ears are clean-cut and sharp, and whose veins stand 
out over her glossy skin, looking affectionately over 
her shoulder at the little dun-colored, fuzzy, impish 
monstrosity who tugs at her udders ? One would 
think she would run away and abandon it to starve, 
— if, indeed, a young mule can be starv^ed; or make 
it convenient to lie down upon it. But she never 
does, and it goes far to show how poor judges moth- 
ers are of their own children. 



ABMY 3IULES. 305 



It lias long been known that there is only one 
way in which a mule can be punished, and, strange 
to say, that is by ini])osing a strain upon his sensi- 
bilities. A mule by himself is the wretchedest of 
beasts. He may not be so very particular about its 
quality, but he must have company; companions to 
tease and torment, to bite and kick and steal from, 
and over whose backs he can rest liis intelligent 
head to stare at the passers-by. Place him in a 
field over whose fence he cannot jump, and which 
he cannot break, — I must be pardoned if I verge 
upon romance in this supposition, — and he will 
betake himself to the staid compan}^ of the unfrisky 
cows, or even to the pigs who are there with him, 
and proceed to bite their backs, and otherwise to 
interfere with their accustomed habits and bodily 
comfort. But he never forgets liis relationship to his 
more respectable uncles and cousins once removed. 
He insists upon considering the horse his brother, 
and, as is well known, can only be coaxed along the 
high-way to market in peace by being enticed by an 
elderly gray mare, on whose neck there is a bell, 
and whom he will follow to the ends of the earth. 
On the other hand, he disdains liis poor relations, 
the asses, and other mules, maintaining toward them 
a demeanor which no more becomes him than it 
does some of his imitators in a higher plane of 
existence. He will have naught to do with the 
thistle-eating fraternity, and will scarce recognize 
them even while undergoing his punishment of soli- 
tary confinement. 

But all this superficial, and manifestly only one 
20 



306 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

side of the case. Since it is possible for some reader 
to say that this chapter is a kind of autobiography, 
and born of introspection, I will hasten to relate the 
other side of the story, — part of which is that this 
curious brute is probably the most useful of the 
dumb toilers whom man holds in perpetual slavery. 
His cool philosophy never forsakes him, in labors 
that no other animal has been found capable of per- 
forming. It is on the plains, and in the corrals of 
the far Southwest, that the mule and his master 
fully understand each other. These desolate lands, 
with their long and waterless roads, are the fields of 
his usefulness. The mule is there a popular and 
aristocratic beast. The weather-battered wagon- 
master of a government train knows intimately 
every animal of the two or three hundred of his 
herd. The teamster has a pet or characteristic name 
for each sleek creature of his team of six. He is 
with them day and night, and enjoys their society, 
and will steal corn for them much sooner than he 
would steal it for himself. He will empty his care- 
fully-saved keg, and give each of his companions a 
hatful of water. A companionship springs up be- 
tween the man and his mules that is little less than 
touching. They know him from afar, and he leads 
them anywhere, merely holding them by the chin. 

Under such circumstances, the mule develo23s 
wonderfully. He is sedate, patient, tractable, hand- 
some, proud of his bells and his occupation, alto- 
gether understanding his business better than any 
draught animal has done since the Conestoga days. 
The steady, daily, methodical work suits him. He 



ARMY 2IULES. 307 



grows actually fat upon it ; and as the years pass, 
each mule gains for himself a reputation among the 
knowing ones. I knew a stall in that remote region 
where for fourteen years stood a sleek and dignified 
mule known through all the country as "Mole." 
The old girl had carried the successive commanders 
of the little post thousands of miles in the number- 
less scouting expeditions that had gone out thence. 
She had long been one of the personages of the 
])lace, and no one doubted that she knew more than 
the common run of soldiers, and that if she could 
have talked her opinions would have been valuable. 
I remember another, an ugly little tangle-maned 
creature wdio wagged his long ears to a grotesque 
name that it is not necessary to mention. Too small 
for ordinary packing purposes, his business from 
time immemorial had been to carry the officer's 
mess. His ugly head had known no bridle for 
years. He was a gamin of his tribe. Kettles and 
pots and long-handled pans were hung and tied to 
every available projection upon his scrawny person. 
Countless efforts had been made to make him go 
hindermost of the long train of his bretliren, where, 
according to rule, he really belonged. Suddenly, 
always in some particularly narrow place, he woidd 
perform that manceuvre known as a "-^pasear.^^ 
Ducking his head, and whisking his scurvy tail, he 
would dash through the line from rear to front, and 
take his place, with all his unsightly appendages, 
beside the commandant, and in the very place of 
honor. A thrashing and a sending to the rear oidy 
enabled him to perform this pleasing feat the oftener. 



308 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

Unconscious of j^ersonal ugliness, lie considered him- 
self the chief ornament to liead-quarters. He was 
always there. He investigated the cookery, and 
looked after the bedding, and the commandant was 
usually awakened early in the morning by his fum- 
bling in an investigatory sort of way in his hair. 
The last exploit of his which I recollect was that of 
walking in between the officer and the men one 
morning at guard-mount, two days after having been 
stolen by the Comanches; — a feat never before per- 
formed by man or mule. 

It is long since conceded by those who know him 
that the army mule is the philosophe)* of the animal 
kingdom. Heretofore the owl and the raven have 
shared that reputation, to the unfair exclusion of all 
others. It is time that mere stupidity should be 
called b}' its proper name. The lack of generous 
spirit which is his notorious fault is the result of a 
shrewd calculation as to the amount of work he 
ought to be required to do. A very tired mule will 
stop in the road, and no amount of persuasion or 
force will induce him to go further. But his fibres 
are tough, and his endurance is wonderful, and he 
])erf()rms tasks of which no other animal in the service 
of man is capable. Ninety miles, a long day and 
night, he can go without water. Past midnight you 
will see each long-eared philosopher at his steady 
jog-trot, wagging his ears backward and forward, and 
pulling upon his bits. Pie knows the nature of the 
emergency as w^ell as his driver does. The nostrils 
are dilated, the eyes have a distressed look, and the 
gaunt flanks throb. But there is no dragging, no 



AHMY 3IULES. 309 



complaint. On and on in tlio gloom and silence for 
you do not know or care liow long, and suddenly the 
whole line sets up that peculiar cry which is not the 
voice of the horse, or of the ass, neither a mixture of 
the two. You may know the animal for years in 
civilization, and not hear it. It means the scent of 
water, perhaps yet miles away; and soon you can 
see upon the horizon the stunted trees which stand 
sparsely upon the banks of the stream which marks 
the end of the desert. 

The carrying capacity of this creature is undoubt- 
edly inherited from the disreputable side of his fam- 
ily, whose flabby sides, thin spines, and cattish 
hams, indicate anything but a remarkable ability to 
plod over hill and dale bearing burdens tliat weigh 
half as much as themselves. In the usual military 
operations of the border, wagons are never used. 
There are no roads, but in their stead steep moun- 
tain-sides, narrow passes, rocks, sand, and never so 
much as a path. It is mostly a country absolutely 
and irredeemably desolate and barren, and yet all 
who traverse it must eat. If there were game in 
any quantity, it could not be killed, for the noise of 
firearms would render useless all the hard toil of a 
scouting party. 

The train that files out of a frontier post upon 
one of these scouting expeditions is a xerj grotesque 
procession, the whole idea of which is born of neces- 
sity in a mountain country, and which is totally 
u id ike anything ever done during the great struggle 
that was our sclio(d of war. Accompanying a lim- 
ited number of men, is a large number of mules. 



310 FRONTIER AR3IT SKETCHES. 

each one laden with his share of the absolute neces- 
sities of life ; bread and bacon, coffee and cartridges. 
There is a master of tlie mules, whose services are 
as indispensable as those of the commanding officer. 
Each solemn beast, impressed with the gravity of his 
undertaking, follows in the footsteps of the brother 
who happens to be ahead of him, his huge load 
swaying from side to side, his long ears wagging, 
and his countenance taking day by day a deeper 
solemnity of expression. He does not stumble or 
wander, and wastes no energy in any kind of devia- 
tions ; but he often lies down and dies with his load 
upon his back. His burden is distributed, his sad- 
dle thrown away, and he is left where he falls. 

A mule's luxury is to roll — not one-sidedly and 
lazily, but in a regular tumble, accompanied by 
snorts, groans, and grunts. Every time his pack is 
removed, he is sure to engage in a general shaking 
up of his whole corporal system. The whole hun- 
dred or two will be at it at once. It comes before 
eating, drinking, or any other diversion. But the 
next thing is grass, if there be any, and if not, the 
nearest approach to it. Then, in the early morning, 
while yet the stars are shining, comes the reloading 
and the starting off again. Tired, lame, lean, galled, 
as he may be, he seldom shows any sign of resent- 
ment at the untimely renewal of his toil — a toil that 
is thankless and cruel, that knows no respite, and 
that is ended only by death. 

There can scarcely be a recollection of a western 
camp-iire around which tlie mule is not a figure — 
sometimes, indeed, too much of one. Dapper Cap- 



AE3IY MULES. 311 



tain Jinks is not tlien himself — or, rather, he is his 
true self. It is the scantiest and most cheerless of 
little fires that is kindled to cook his bacon and boil 
his coffee. His pillow is a saddle or nothing, his 
mattress an old blue overcoat, and his covering a 
gray blanket. His clothes are those of a private, 
and his hat is the broad-brimmed slouch that is 
pulled low over his brows by day, worn all night, 
and used as a universal duster, castigator of insects, 
fire-persuader, and general vade mecum. Sometimes 
there is that variety of canopy known as a " dog- 
tent,'' hoisted upon improvised sticks to keep off the 
wind, or crawled under by Jinks in case of frost. It 
is, however, usually eaten by the mules at the 
beginning of the campaign, and philosophically done 
without for the remainder. 

Here, while the always-thorny ground is covered 
with recumbent figures pell-mell around him. Jinks 
props his back against a rock, gazes thoughtfully 
into the coals, smokes, anmses himself with far-away 
thoughts, and tells stories. If one were by himself 
at a little distance, he would be struck by the 
strange incongruity of the hilarity that occasionally 
reaches his ears. Ragged sentinels stand sleepily 
upon the outskirts, not so much as vedettes against 
the enemy as guardians of the mules. IN'evertheless, 
it would take but little to awake this military repose 
into great activity and surprising order. Where all 
was apparent confusion the evening before, at sun- 
rise there is not a vestige left. They were here ; 
they are gone. The long train has wound itself 
av/ay among voiceless hills, intent upon some dim 



312 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

trail, or lias turned suddenly into some unmapped 
pass, and has left nothing behind but some little 
heaps of gray ashes. 

Sometimes, but in truth not often, the mountain 
Apache is actually traced to his hiding-place. He 
has been stalked for three weeks, and has been 
patiently crept upon while he and his belongings 
were lying safe in some inaccessible nook of the 
mountains. It is his hiding-place and storehouse 
after his last raid, an exploit but for which the mili- 
tary would have let him alone. He has had everj^ 
advantage over his enemies. He knows the country 
as a citizen knows the streets of his town. He has 
made a flying raid upon the settlements, killed, 
burned, and carried captive. The same band has 
been in a dozen localities, and has gone here and 
there, stealing, killing, and waylaying, for the mere 
love of it. But somebody has gotten upon his trail, 
and the mules have been packed. It sometimes 
ends with the complete destruction of his rancherea^ 
the destruction of all his winter's provender, the 
loss of some members of his family, and the great 
reduction of his fighting force. 

It residts, therefore, that while the above may 
seem a digression from the important subject under 
consideration, the army mule, with all his "cheek," 
is still the chief factor in all military operations on 
the frontier. His corral is the most interesting and 
important appurtenance of a military post, and his 
care is a thing of solicitude on the part of all con- 
cerned in the efficiency of the service. He was 
adopted in the place of the horse in the beginning, 
because he had a character, and from it he has never 



ABMY MULES. 313 



been known to diverge. It is not asserted that anyone 
quite understands liini, or after many years of asso- 
ciation witli liini is a])le to tell precisely what he 
might not take it into his long head to do. But he 
is faithful to his tyrant to the end and death. He 
will not leave the camp-fire or the wagon, though 
shelterless and unfed. Once away from his stall, 
and he persistently stays by his master, carrying 
him all day and standing beside his bed all night, 
looking his hunger with all the eloquence of his 
doleful face, and crying his peculiar note of distress 
at intervals frequent enough to accomplish his object 
of keeping his owner awake and sorry. His rela- 
tive, the horse, has for ages been the especial pet of 
man, and has deserved to be. Yet there was never 
a plebeian mule, doomed from colthood to unremit- 
ting toil, who was not infinitely his superior in that 
peculiar knowledge that has never been classified, 
that "sense" that is neither memory nor mind, 
which is inadequately described by the term sagaci- 
ty, which is not instinct, and wdiich is a marked 
characteristic in all the long-eared and thistle-eating 
fraternity. He is docile and devilish, tricky and 
faithful, never requires to be broken and never is 
broken, is always in difficulty and is never injured, 
is reckless of any and all consequences and yet 
exceedingly cautious. He is awkward and clumsy 
in gait and appearance, and slow of foot, yet comes 
out fresh and vigorous at the end of journeys that 
wear his rider to illness and lameness. He is, taken 
all in all, a study in natural history that will never 
have a definite conclusion, a creature that is a 
sphinx, and yet a mule. 



XVIII. 
A LOISTESOME OHEISTIAK 

GRIMES was his name — "Old Grimes" lie was 
called by the irreverent world that knew him 
well, and which doubtless he knew too in return, as 
a man knows something that has not been pleasant 
to him, and the pain and wickedness and hollowness 
of which have been forced upon him by a grim ex- 
perience. 

Grimes's name was the only thing about him that 
offered any poetic suggestion, and was not lightly 
passed or forgotten by those who saw him every day. 
The legend of that old man whose dirge has been 
sung these sixty years — whose coat was old, and 
gray, and buttoned down before, in every version of 
that irreverent elegy — is the common inheritance 
of all the English-speaking race, wherever they wan- 
der. The ragged urchins twanged it endlessly in his 
ears from behind the corners of shanties whenever 
his bent figure came in sight. Even tlie grown-u]-) 
Texans, who lounged, gambled, and traded horses 
at the sutler's store, repeated it to him as a standing 
joke that could not be worn out. But he paid no 
attention or diverted the topic when he could, and 
hobbled away slowly, ever muttering to himself 
something that nobody heard or heeded. Had 
Grimes been a common man, he would have died of 

314 



A LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 315 

the torture of iteration, or liave made shift, some 
fateful day, to have killed some one of his torment- 
ors. It would have been quite to his credit, in tlie 
country in which he lived, to have done the latter. 
Bat he did neither. In truth. Grimes was not an 
ordinary person. 

The residence of this song-tormented old person 
was a rough and canvas-covered shanty, situated by 
a rambling path in the midst of a congregation of 
such, some better, some worse. The place was 
known by the denizens of the neighboring post as 
"Slabtown.'' The open and unfinished quadrangle, 
and the square stone houses that had all a homeless 
and dreary look, were some half-mile away. Fort 
Concho was confessedly a hard place, all of it. Slab- 
town was its foster-child, tilled with stranded emi- 
grants, cattle-herders, gamblers, and men who had 
no occupation. Out toward the bleak northwest, 
Llano Estacado stretched its endless leagues of rock 
and cactus — the wildest land beneath the flag, 
governed and owned by the Comanche, and utterly 
useless and tenantless for all time, save for that 
Saxon savage almost as wild as he. 

But Slabtown, straggling up from the little river's 
side, sat with its shanties under tlie lee of tlie post, 
fully confiding in its military neighbor. Here were 
privileged to come and remain through the windy 
Texas winter, all men, with a due proportion of 
women, whose tastes or whose occupations led them 
to the far verge of civilization. Thither came the 
cattle-man, and watched his wild herds on the neigh- 
boring hills, until returning greenness warned him 



316 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

oiF upon the California trail. Thither returned tlie 
man who had accomplished the wonderful journey, 
laden with fortunate gold. Bearded, broad-brimmed, 
and belted, here lounged a small army of guides and 
trailers, playing shrewd games at cards, drinking 
San Antonio whiskey, and at intervals shooting at 
each other. The gaunt and long-footed Texas girl, 
chalky, yellow-haired, and awkward, minced from 
cabin to cabin with neighborly gossip, and did her 
calico-and-green-ribbon shopping at the pine coun- 
ters of the trader's stores. There were urchins 
many, coatless and shoeless from January to Decem- 
ber, who were as the calves of this corral of human- 
ity. Here, too, was that pink of the border, the 
dashing stage-driver, who, for forty dollars per 
month, every day ran the gauntlet through sixty 
miles of Indian-haunted desolation, and who, at tlie 
end of his "trick,'' rewarded himself witli two days 
of dalliance with the belles of Slabtown, to whom, 
indeed, he was as the apple of their pale eyes. 

And among these people lived Fatlier Grimes, 
and these were they who sang the ancient ditty to 
him as he passed by. What his occupation was, 
nobody precisely knew or cared; but they " 'lowed '' 
he was "well-heeled," and "had a little tucked 
away somewhere." In the particular condition of 
society — or, rather, want of all society — that envi- 
roned him, the inquiry into Grimes's business would 
hardly have gone so far as that, had it not been that 
his daughter occupied a conspicuous position as the 
prettiest girl at Concho, and was famous alike for 
the brilliancy of her cheeks and her dresses. She 



A LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 317 

and Father Grimes lived alone, and it was scarcely 
tlioiiglit of that at some former period a mother had 
been necessary in the usual course of nature. ^'Old 
Grimes and his gal" filled all the Grimes horizon, 
and there was no idea or feeling connected with 
them that had any further association. 

It would be entirely in accordance with good taste 
if it were possible now to describe a dutiful daughter, 
entirely devoted to her aged father, and resenting the 
verbal indignities daily heaped upon him. But the 
facts, as somewhat dimly remembered, altogether 
forbid. Of all the old num's troubles, his daughter 
was probably tlie greatest. She was not gaunt and 
angular, like the other ladies of Slabtown as a rule; 
her cheeks were like peonies, and her round figure 
had a perceptible jellyish shaking as she walked. 
She disturbed her father's slumbers with hoydenish 
laughter, while the hours struck small in the night 
watches, and while her many admirers stayed and 
would not go. She was a coquette besides, and 
refused to comfort the paternal heart by assuming 
the hard duties of a Texan's wife. Sary Grimes was 
a wild girl, possibly not a bad creature, but, as it 
might have been expressed in an eastern village, 
''liable to be talked about" — one of the social pun- 
ishments not much dreaded, however, in the region 
of Fort Concho. There was, I fear, a consciousness 
in her face whenever she passed a man in the road, 
and it is equally to be feared that her prudent chas- 
tit}' had but little suggestion of snow or crvstal in it. 
But as the belle of Slabtown, she reigned supreme; 
and, of course, the greater part of her female friends 



318 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

cast aspersions upon her. She kept all her admirers 
ill a state of mind which had in it much torment, 
with occasional glimpses of beatitude. Charles 
Hanks, Esq., stage driver, started out upon his trip 
with a large fortune of happy thoughts, and dis- 
cussed the object nearest his heart with the box-pas- 
senger for twenty miles at once. But when he 
returned, Sary would no more speak to him than if, 
as he complained, he "had been a yaller dog." 
But Mr. Hanks had no special cause of complaint, 
for he fared as all his contemporaneous rivals did. 

Father Grimes's reputation was that he was 
"alius good to that gal o' his'n." He was never 
known on any occasion to nse a petulant expression 
to any person or thing. His peculiarity more often 
remarked than any other was that he did not swear. 
It was a wonder he did not, for nobody doubted that 
he had a hard life of it. With regard to Grimes, the 
half has not been told. We have seen men who had 
survived some great disaster, some horrible man- 
gling, and went cimwling through life thereafter, 
lame, scarred, deformed, the hideous semblance of a 
human creature. Such was this poor, rich old man. 
His limbs were drawn awry. His shapeless hands 
almost refused to grasp his staif, and every line of 
his face denoted an experience of pain, happily past 
for the time, but ever leaving a grim promise to 
return and wring the distorted limbs anew, until the 
hour of his relief Yet Grimes had not been the vic- 
tim of any sudden accident or great calamity. Fire, 
nor falling walls, nor the rebellion of man's gigantic 
servant against his master in rushing steam and fall- 



A L0NES03IE CHRISTIAN. 319 

ing fragments, were incidents in his hard life. And 
yet his fate had been little better. His days had 
been days of pain, and his nights had been spent in 
torture, and in waiting and praying for daylight or 
death. It is common enough, but Ariel, bright 
spirit of enchanted air, suffered and groaned no more 
in the cloven pine than a strong man may beneath 
rheumatic torture. 

Thus it was that the old man's gentleness was a 
marvel to those who reviled him daily. Worn and 
deformed with his battle of years with his enemy, 
he sat at his cabin door in the sun, and placidly 
nodded at those who passed by, and whispered to 
himself, and smiled. Sometimes he had been asked 
if it had not hurt him while in slow torment his 
limbs had been twisted and drawn thus. "Oh yes," 
he said, "it did hurt," but he smiled as lie thus 
answered a question which would have been both 
superfluous and cruel if the old man had not seemed 
to possess some panacea that enabled him to almost 
defy pain. 

This distorted figure, this pain-written face, and 
these strange ways. Father Grimes possessed alone. 
They were strange in the land, for sturdy, bearded 
manhood, reckless ways, loud words and a blood- 
curdling blasphemy were the rule with his associates 
and near neighbors. While they knew that he had 
within him something which they neither possesed 
nor understood, they only said " curus creetur," 
and passed on. Whatever it was they had no 
respect for it; they thought him a little crazy. lie 
had done strange things that they knew of Had 



320 FRONTIER ARJIY SKETCHES. 

he not once tried to interfere with a very promising 
horse-race on a Sundaj^? Did he not come down to 
the trader's store one night last fall, and lift up his 
quavering voice in a Methodist hymn, and try to get 
lip a prayer-meeting right there among the boys, 
"and a hundred dollars in the pot, and me with 
three queens in my hand?" It was Charles Hanks, 
Esq., who described this scene, and added, "He's 
a old fool with a stavin' purty gal ; 'twas just that 
wich saved his meat, — a interferin' thataway." 

It was not strange that, with these queer ways. 
Father Grimes was alone in such a place, with only 
his heart to keep him company. There was a chap- 
lain at the post, but he seemed as yet to have dis- 
covered no affinity for this eccentric old man. He 
preferred soldiers of the cross of more robust ten- 
dencies, and in line. If being a Christian was what 
was the matter with Grrimes's dazed head, he had 
an entire monopoly of the complaint. On bright 
Sunday mornings there was a formal service on the 
parade ground, and plumed heads bowed slightly 
in the etiquette of military devotion. But Father 
Grimes was as much out of place there as he was at 
the sutler's, and stood afar off, failing to under- 
stand, perhaps, what all this had in common with 
a camp-meeting in far western Yirginia, or with such 
piety and worshij) as would have been acceptable to 
his fellow-believers of the United Brethren in Christ. 

Of course he had little control of the hoj^denish 
Sary. That young w^oman shared somewhat , in the 
current belief regarding her father's mental condi- 
tion. Living in the same house, they had no com- 



A LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 321 

panionsliij) ; and while slie cared for Lis common 
wants and daily meals, that was the extent, to all 
appearance, of her interest in him. He perhaps 
constituted the sober side of her life ; she would 
have been ready to do battle for him with a ready 
tongue, but she also claimed the privelege of pri- 
vately regarding him with as much carelessness and 
half-contempt as was possible with her knowledge 
of the fact that he really was her father and she 
could not help it. 

The incident which placed Father Grimes promi- 
nently before the public in a new light — an incident 
all the more remarkable because it was the last in 
his career — came about in this wise. There came 
to Concho a long-haired and ambrosial man, who 
claimed to have been one of those hard riders from 
the Lone-Star state, who figured so extensively in 
the cavalry force of the late Confederate army. He 
was broad-shouldered, tall, swaggering, of a military 
carriage, and claimed to be "still a rebel and a 
fighting man, sir." Now Hanks was not just a 
Yankee, but he and this child of chivalry soon found 
means of disagreement upon another matter. The 
Confederate used often to say that he did not care a 
profane expletive for Miss Grimes, but he made it a 
point to allow no man to stand before him in the 
graces of a livin' woman, sir. So, in a few weeks, 
Hanks and he looked askance at each other, and 
finally refused to play poker at the same table, and 
avoided a mutuality in bibulous exercises by com- 
mon consent. The wicked Sary, gifted with peculiar 
insight into such matters, flattered the new beau, 
21 



322 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

and smiled upon him with beams particularly 
bright; albeit, she divided her favors, and gave 
Planks enough to keep him alive to the stature and 
strength of his rival, and the dangers arising from 
delay and absence. These things did not j^ass 
unnoticed by the others, and a keen look-out was 
kept for the hour when the difficulty should cul- 
minate. The patient sitters upon benches and the 
industrious carvers of deal boxes kept the two men 
in sight, and watched them with an eye to being 
present when the time came. They discussed the 
chances among themselves, much as they discussed 
the projected race for three hundred yards between 
Hopkins's bald-face and the spotted pony. They 
knew Hanks, and generally considered him the bet- 
ter man. There was a slight inclination to preju- 
dice against the Confederate, perhaps. "He's full 
o' brag," they remarked ; "hain't seen his grit yet." 
One night Father Grimes sat in the inner room 
of his poor house. Tlie cotton cloth that did duty 
as glass, puffed in and out in the window frame, 
and the "grease-dip" burned yellow and dim on 
the edge of its broken cup. There was the usual 
chatter and coarse laughter in the outer room, and 
he knew that the Confederate and Sar}^ were there. 
This gallant gentleman was in his best mood that 
night, and the laughter of the girl, and the man's 
tone of light raillery, reached Grimes's wakeful ears 
with annoying distinctness. The old man sat in his 
bent posture near the light, and studied out the 
words of a big worn volume upon his knee. His 
grizzled hair lay in tangled confusion upon his neck, 



A LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 323 

and as he stumbled through the sentences he spelled 
and whispered the words to himself. The night was 
his enemy and torment. He was passing the dull 
time of age and affliction, and, withal, gathering 
comfort from the only book he possessed or needed. 
It was no common book he pored over and spelled; 
it is said to have been the Bible. 

Presently the outer door opened, and with a gruff 
salutation Hanks entered. His arrival from his last 
drive could not have been more than an hour ago. 
He had not wasted time in j)aying his respects. He 
sat down at the rude table, and lor)ked at Sary and 
her companion. That Hanks was in an ugly humor 
was quite evident. It was equally evident that he 
was bent upon the operation known among his kind 
as "pickin' a fuss." He did not attempt to conceal 
his feelings, and glowered at his rival, and still sat 
silent. The dark j)urpose of the border rowdy was 
in his eye and the jealousy and anger of all his law- 
less kind was apparent in the studied deliberateness 
of all his actions. The other looked at him with a 
cool grin of defiance. At a meeting of this kind, two 
such men have little need of tongues. 

Presently the late-comer rose slowly, and moved 
his chair, and sat down almost in front of his rival. 
The old man in the inner room heard the movement, 
and started and listened, closing his book. Having 
thus changed his position. Hanks placed his hands 
upon his knees, looked his rival obtrusively in the 
face, and calmly remarked: 

"I shouldn't wonder. Mister, ef I thought you 
was a low down kind of a cuss." 



324 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

"What? " exclaimed the Confederate. 

"I say — are ye list'nin'? — that I shouldn't won- 
der ef I thought you was a low down sneakin' — " 

The Confederate gentleman arose, motioned to 
Hanks, and moved toward the door. They both 
went out, moved a little way along the wall toward 
the old man's flapping window, and stopped. 

"I don't do my fightin' in the presence o' wim- 
men," said the Confederate, "but I'm a fightin' 
man, an' ye kin hev all ye' re spilin' for. There's 
no use in bein' in a ungentlemanly hurry about this 
'ere little diffikilty ; to-morrer mornin', — break o' 
day, sharp, at the sand-bar beyant Stokes's, '11 suit 
me, ei you kin stand it." 

" Wot's yer weepins," said the other. 

"J^avy size — -ten paces." 

"Seconds?" 

":N"ary man." 

"I'll be thar ; " and Old Grimes heard the foot- 
steps die away in opposite directions. 

He hobbled into the room where his daughter 
sat. Her pinky cheeks were a little paler, and there 
was an unwonted apprehension in her eyes. " Sary," 
he said, "kin ye do nothin' to keep them two young 
fellers apart ? " 

"[N'o, they're two fools, an' it's none of my 
affair." 

' " Did ye hear what they said outside ? " 
' " Yes, I heard ; I was list'nin'; they kin flght it 
out. There's better men than either of 'em." 

Grimes turned and went back to his little bare 
room — the little bare and shabby place where the 



A LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 325 

company who came and sat with liim were not 
inhabitants of Slabtown, — and seated himself upon 
the bed, and communed with himself. It is a 
strange life, and a wonderful education, that can 
teach a red-cheeked and hoydenish girl to smile at 
the passions that lead to the grim revenges of the 
border. The old man sat and thought, and the 
liours passed slowly. He lay downi upon tlie rude 
bed, and perhaps would have slept if he could. 
Then he rose and occupied himself in reading again, 
and went out often and looked into the shadows of 
the still night. Otily the far guard-challenge fell 
upon his ear at intervals, and seemed to announce 
the passing hours. Finally the ripe stars that glow 
in the noon of night began to pale in their westward 
setting. The cocks crew, and the lowing of kine 
was borne far upon the damp morning air. The day 
was coming, and even tliese far fields of solitude 
and desolation began to be stirred by a feeble pulse 
of life. 

lN"o soul, save these two men, a thoughtless 
woman, and an old man almost helpless, knew of 
the meeting on the sands, from which but one, and 
probably neither, would ever return. Father Grimes 
got his hat and staff, and hobbled forth. He 
thought he knew the spot, he would go thitlier. It 
was such a journey as he had not made for many a 
day. He wondered if he would be there in time, 
and hastened. 

The chill air of dawn pierced his frail body, and 
he shivered. Painfully, and all too slowly, he 
walked tile stepping-stones across the puny torrent, 



326 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCHES. 

and toiled up the bank upon the other side. He 
saw the gray streaks in the east, and hastened, 
groaning, for he remembered the words "at break 
o' day, sharp." His journey was a pathless one, 
cactus-grown and tangled with long grass. Finally 
he reached the crest of the low bluffs, and the little 
acre of brown sand lay before him in the growing 
light. Peering with his old eyes, he discovered two 
figures there. One of them stood listless, while the 
other paced slowly across a little space ; then his 
companion measured the space likewise, in long and 
swinging strides. As the old man drew nearer, he 
saw that the two took opposite places, and that 
while one leaned forward anxiously, the other's atti- 
tude was careless and his weapon hand hung by his 
side. He shouted with the utmost strength of his 
old wiry voice, and they seemed to pay no heed. 
Then, and for the first time in ten years, he tried to 
run. As he drew closer, he saw that Hanks was 
nearest to him, and almost between him and the tall 
Confederate. Then one said ^^ Heady ^^^ and his 
adversary answered "Ready." But Grimes noticed 
that Hanks held his weapon in readiness to fire, 
while the other brought his slowly up from his side. 
The thought must have passed through his mind 
like a flash; "If I could but push one of them 
aside, I could save them." But already they had 
begun to count, slowly and simultaneously : ''one — 
two — "and at the word '''two^^^ Hanks dropped 
suddenly in his place, and two shots awoke the 
silence almost together. The tall Confederate stood 
still a moment, then staggered, and fell backward. 



A L0NES03IE CHRISTIAN. 327 



while a crimson stream trickled slowly out upon the 
brown sand, and sank, leaving the stain of murder 
beside his stark figure, as he lay, with open, staring 
dead eyes, looking at the glowing sky. 

Hanks had dropped suddenly in his place, and 
had fired before the word. It was the trick that 
almost disgraces the Comanche from whom he had 
in a manner acquired it. He now rose up and 
looked around him furtively. In the sunshine of 
high noon it was a dreary and silent sj^ot ; and now 
in the purple morning, with the dead man lying as 
he had fallen, with the brown sand, and the sage, 
and tlie gaunt and thorny cactus on every hand, 
Hanks seemed to shiver, as he buttoned his coat, and 
looked nervously about him, and stood a moment 
thinking. Then, by chance or through fear, he cast 
a glance behind him, and saw Father Grimes sunk 
down in a heap with his head fallen forward upon 
his bosom. Perhaps he thouglit the old man dead ; 
— at least he had caught the bullet meant for him- 
self. He hesitated a moment, looked around the 
horizon, and then moved by sudden fear, walked 
rapidly away through the stunted trees beyond the 
sand. This tale chronicles no further the wander- 
ings of the assassin : he never returned. 

Father Grimes slowly raised his head by and by, 
pressed his hand to his side, and tried to rise. After 
a while they came and bore him to his cabin, and 
placed him upon his bed. For ill news travels 
quickly, and the curiosity of the hard community 
had quickly hurried a crowd to the spot. While he 
lay quietly and looked upward through the cabin 



328 FRONTIER ARMY SKETCJSES. 



roof, calm and placid, the post surgeon came, and 
the commandant, and even the chaplain, and the 
crowd gathered at the outer door, only parting to 
permit the passage of another burden that was borne 
there by chance or a fancied connection with Grimes 
and his daughter, and laid upon a low bench beside 
the wall, crying murder through the hush with its 
white, uncovered face. 

They questioned the old man, and brokenly and 
at intervals he told them all he knew. No, not all ; 
for his mind seemed preoccupied, and at intervals 
he stopped and lay very quiet, looking at something 
they could not see, and smiling as he feebly held 
out his hand. His care-worn and pain-burdened 
life was passing ftist. That they knew, and were 
awed in the presence of that Death so many of 
them had courted, so many had pretended to 
scorn. They watched him, and waited to hear if he 
had aught else to tell. A little while passed in 
silence. Suddenly he opened his eyes again, and 
looked intently toward a corner of the room. It 
was not a look of scrutiny, doubt, or inquiry, but of 
happy certainty and surprise. A faint flush stole 
into the pallor of his old face ; his eye brightened, 
and he stretched forth his hand and tried to lift him- 
self upon his arm. The doctor bent over him (the 
chaplain was gone home again\ and asked him what 
he would have. The old man turned with a hjok of 
surprise, and pointed with his finger. 

"Don't you see Him ? •' he said. 
. "I see no one ; — what is he like ? " 

"I — I don't know. His face shines, and He 



A LONESOME CHRISTIAN. 329 



smiles. It is like Him as He walked upon the sea. 
• . . . Oh, Master, have you come so far for 

And death sealed npon the scarred and wrinkled 
face its last beatitude. Thej went out and left him 
there, and closed the door. And as thej passed 
through the outer chamber, thej saw the girl as she 
sat by the bench beside the wall, and looked with 
tearless eyes afar off, and held in her lap her dead 
lover's cold ric^ht hand. 



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